ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how the nation is performed within the national museum, the roles played by sets, scripts and actors, and some of the connections, boundaries and determinants of one's national imagining. It concerns the manner in which national museums contribute to imagining and defining the nation, both for citizens and wider international communities. The chapter suggests that the national museum's performance is configured within a definable multidimensional space; to suggest that the museum seeks to shape a particular imagining of the nation through its deployment of space and objects according to embedded values and perceptions. The object worked upon by artistic and scientific processes may gain a special place in this national making but it may also retain geographical connections beyond the museum. Across the national museums of Europe, there is an implicit and connective language of material objects and architecture dominated by the motifs of Classical culture.
