ABSTRACT
The chapter addresses the idea that the museum is a public space in the dual sense of both being symbolically representative as an institution of the demos and acting as a place where contrasting and varied concepts of belonging may be negotiated and tried out. The chapter examines how the dialectic between belonging and difference plays out in the political and public sphere of museums that address topics of belonging. Using exhibition and display analyses, interviews, and observations in museums across Germany addressing topics of migration, refugees, race, and discrimination, the chapter is structured around three key elements of such museum work, bringing qualitative empirical data to bear on theoretical and conceptual questions concerning the notion of belonging and difference in contemporary European society – in particular, theories of democracy and public space, of contact and encounter, and of transformative actions. In doing so, it highlights the power dynamics at play in the attempts of museum actors to transform the public space of the museum which they represent into a site for staging and examining claims of belonging.
