ABSTRACT
Nations seek to establish their right to exist by stressing their independence, rooted in the past, often in a mythical narrative that seldom undergoes much scientific scrutiny. Museums validate these myths and justify the nation’s existence, in part, by demonstrating when and how the nation came into being with the use of material culture. Museums are one of the many instruments by which a form of communal memory of these foundational moments, or episodes, are disseminated to citizens (Connerton 1989). These origin stories can be situated deeply in time or in relatively recent events, but they tell us as much about the present as they do the past. They are exhibited as though they are scientific and dispassionate, based as they are on the evidence of traditional disciplines such as archaeology, geology and history, with the presumption that they are founded on ‘an objectively verifiable body of knowledge’ (Samuel 2019: 81). However, all origin stories in museums and galleries are selective, based on cultural beliefs and practices that seek to bind peoples together and, as such, are emotional, eliciting from the visitor feelings of belonging or exclusion. National foundation myths and legends are sacred, generating strong feelings (Kapferer 2012: 1), and they are used to justify contemporary political actions and attitudes.
