The Role of Museums in Perilous Times: What’s Happening in Poland?

featuring Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

Recent efforts in Poland to dictate how the history of the Holocaust should be told have placed museums in the crosshairs of historical policy and the politics of history. As institutions of public history and sites of informal learning, museums can play a vital role in presenting difficult histories that are authoritative, without being authoritarian. To fulfill that role, they must create a zone of trust, and model civil discourse, open debate, and critical approaches to history. What stories are museums in Poland telling and how free are they to tell them? This talk will focus on how POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews is meeting these challenges.

Free and open to the public.

Co-Sponsors:

Jewish Museum Milwaukee

Milwaukee Art Museum

Milwaukee Public Museum

Sam & Helen Stahl Center for Jewish Studies

University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Departments of Anthropology, Art History, and History; Center for 21st Century Studies; Center for International Education; and the Cultures & Communities and Museum Studies programs