Museums Under Fire: Exploring how modern conflicts affect Danish museums
The project examines the impacts of contemporary conflicts on Danish museums and art institutions. The project centers on three case studies, which reflects the institutional difficulties of working with contemporary conflicts.
The main aim of the project is to examine the influence of contemporary conflicts on Danish museums and art institutions. The project will provide insights into how Danish museums and art institutions address the increasing demand – both from the public and heritage professionals – for the museum sector to engage in international crises and political discussions.
The project thus provides new knowledge into the politicization of museums and the reorientation of their presentation and preservation of art and cultural heritage objects and contributes to a greater understanding of how conflict has shaped and continues to shape the museum institution and its mission.
Over the past two decades, museums have found themselves increasingly embroiled in wars and conflicts. While cultural heritage and museums have always functioned as political, ideological, and strategic symbols, the role of the museum has evolved with contemporary conflicts. This development has underlined that the museum is a political institution heavily affected by geopolitical contexts.
Research into the effect of modern and contemporary conflicts on museums have often focused on museums located in areas directly affected by conflict. However, more and more museums outside conflict zones find themselves confronted with issues related to these conflicts, involving both the institutions’ exhibitions and collections as well as their entire raison d’être: Are museums and art institution obligated to take a stand in a conflict? Can museums present art, artists, or cultural heritage objects with relations to, for example, ongoing conflicts in the Middle East without reflecting on their own (historic) role in collecting objects from this region? How can and should museums navigate this complex field?
To address these issues, the project poses the following research question:
How are contemporary geopolitical conflicts affecting the way Danish museums and art institutions approach their collections and exhibitions of art and cultural heritage objects?
The project centers on three case studies that each examine the way war and conflict challenge museum and art institutions and force them to rethink the way they curate exhibitions and present their collections. The main examined exhibitions are:
- RUS - Vikings in the East at Moesgaard Museum (2022)
- Things to Come at Gammel Strand (2024)
- Curtain call and The song is the call and the land is calling at the Glyptotek (2023-2024)
These cases allow us to scrutinize various types of institutional and organizational structures with markedly different histories and practices. The selected case studies also reflect the evolution of the utilization of cultural heritage in multiple contemporary conflicts over the past two decades and exposes the institutional difficulties of working with and in the context of contemporary conflicts.
Aiming to facilitate knowledge sharing between practitioners and researchers, the project will host two interdisciplinary seminars revolving around the three cases. Each seminar will invite representatives from the examined museums as well as other museums engaged in questions relating to the relationship between museums and conflict.
- Seminar 1: København, juni 2026
- Seminar 2: Aarhus, 2027
Researchers
| Name | Title | Phone | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Christensen, Marie Elisabeth Berg | Postdoc | +4535331073 | |
| Thorsen, Terne Nanna | Postdoc | +4535335517 |