Exhibiting Europe in Museums: Transnational Networks, Collections, Narratives, and Representations

Museums of history and contemporary culture face many challenges in the modern age. One is how to react to processes of Europeanization and globalization, which require more cross-border cooperation and different ways of telling stories for visitors. This book investigates how museums exhibit Europe. Based on research in nearly 100 museums across the Continent and interviews with cultural policy makers and museum curators, it studies the growing transnational activities of state institutions, societal organizations, and people in the museum field such as attempts to Europeanize collection policy and collections as well as different strategies for making narratives more transnational like telling stories of European integration as shared history and discussing both inward and outward migration as a common experience and challenge. The book thus provides fascinating insights into a fast-changing museum landscape in Europe with wider implications for cultural policy and museums in other world regions.Wolfram Kaiser is Professor of European Studies at the University of Portsmouth in England and Visiting Professor at the College of Europe. He has been Visiting Senior Fellow at the Free University of Berlin, the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies, and the University of Edinburgh. Stefan Krankenhagen is Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Hildesheim in Germany. He has been Research Fellow at the Centre for Advanced Studies at LMU Munich and the German American Academic Council in Washington, D.C. Kerstin Poehls is Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Hamburg in Germany. She completed her PhD in European Ethnology at Humboldt University in Berlin and has been Visiting Scholar at the University of the Aegean in Mytilini/Greece in 2011.