Questions on The Roles of History and Museums as Containers of Self-

Representation and Participants in Evolving Social Narratives

Tom Hennes

I will begin with a thesis that I find useful in planning museums of all types. Behind the

representation of their subjects, museums—all museums—represent the community of individuals who

create them. This community includes boards of trustees, staff, donors, and other closely linked and

interested groups. Together, these groups give precedence to the objects and narratives that represent the

identity and motivating passions that bind their community together. The success or failure of that

representation depends largely on the degree to which it opens itself to others outside that community. If 

others can identify with the presentation—if they can form or identify a relationship to it—then they, too,

can create an affinity with its subject.

This way of thinking about museums raises a host of questions that are particularly relevant to

history museums, which most often purport to represent the lives and experiences of others within an

intellectually defensible narrative. How can that representation be made authentic and accessible? Which

version of history is given voice, particularly in the case of contested and traumatic histories? How can

contrasting narratives be represented in a way that doesn’t confuse, traumatize or simply alienate the

uninitiated visitor? When the museum is situated among communities of conflict, each of which has a

significant stake in its narrative, what role can the institution play not only in representing contested

history, but, more importantly, in facilitating reconciliation among—or regeneration within those

communities?

These are not idle questions. I am working on two history projects in which these questions apply

with significance in very different circumstances. The National 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York 

chronicles the events of 9/11 and their aftermath, and The Freedom Park in South Africa represents that

nation’s diverse communities and the conflicts that consumed them for generations. Both these museums

have the potential to inflame tensions, promote healing, or stand at the edge of irrelevance. If irrelevant,

they are unsustainable as institutions. As active participants in the social narratives they engage, they

 present both potentials risks and benefits that reach far beyond their traditional roles as museums.

To one degree or another, the events of 9/11 are purported to have affected a third of the world’s

 population, which either experienced them directly or watched and listened to them in more or less real

time in the mass media. There is a small, dedicated group of people—families of victims, those who

escaped the Twin Towers or the Pentagon, those who lived in lower Manhattan—who have a significant

and vocal stake in the narrative. There is also a much larger group of people from around the world who

were traumatized by 9/11 to some degree, and this group has a stake as well. Neither of these groups is

monolithic, none possesses a singular truth about the events. In fact the knowledge of what occurred that

day is constantly evolving. There is no one story of the events sufficient to represent what happened.

The design of the museum takes as its basis the premise that each story of 9/11 is only one of 

many that could stand in its stead—each from a slightly different perspective. The design attempts to

construct a coherent narrative from many similar and contrasting narratives, utilizing the mass of imagery

and first-person accounts that have been and will continue to be collected. It will provide opportunities for 

visitors to donate their own stories, and it will use sophisticated visualization and data-mining tools to

 present an archive of information in a way that the uninitiated may navigate and comprehend. Within this

are many uncertainties, such as the balance of presentation that provides an authentic experience in the

museum without traumatizing, or further traumatizing, visitors. If the museum is successful, it will have

aided its visitors in coming to better know their own experience of 9/11, overcoming some of the traumatic

effects of the tragedy and better integrating these events into their lives.

The Freedom Park presents another set of issues distinct from, but not unrelated to, those of the

9/11 Memorial Museum. Originally intended as a national memorial and museum to honor those who died

in the Liberation Struggle in South Africa, its official mandate has evolved to encompass eight conflict

events across South African history as well as further the task of national reconciliation that the Truth and

Reconciliation Commission of 1996-1998 began. The project, located on a 53 hectare (131 acre) hill in

Tschwane (formerly Pretoria), principally includes a memorial (Sikhumbuto), a shrine (Isivivane), and a

museum (//hapo).

//hapo is the word for “dream” in the language of the Khoi people, who together with the San

comprise the oldest ethnic group in the country. The name is inspired by a proverb that is translated as: “A

dream is not a dream until it is shared by the entire community.” //hapo was conceived as a place in which

Copyright © 2009 Tom Hennes. All rights Reserved Page 1 of 2

 

South Africans, in all their diversity, could reflect on their complex heritage and share dreams for the

nation’s future.

The history encompassed by this museum will not be fixed or fully understood. Rather, it is a

deeply contested history that includes the period of colonization and apartheid but also predates this period

 by several thousand years. It is upon the basis of that long history that contemporary issues are likewise

contested and yet that history is not well understood in its breadth and is often seen in isolation. Each group

in South Africa has its own history, to a degree, and those histories and their accompanying cultural

narratives are rarely comprehended in light of each other.

The relevance of this mutual incomprehension is evident in the many vocal and public disputes

that have arisen in the making of Freedom Park. These include issues of representation: Who is to be

honored in an enterprise meant to represent all sides in a conflict that disposed with a system of governance

held to have been indefensibly unjust? There are also issues of contradictory interpretation: How can one

history emerge within the context of indigenous knowledge and western science; oral traditions and

colonial history; African spirituality and other religions? Many of these interpretations not only contrast

with each other, but are also held by some to be fundamentally repellent to each other. It is often nearly

impossible for one group with a South African narrative to recognize the simultaneous legitimacy of 

another. And yet that mutual recognition is essential if South Africa is to succeed as a nation.

Thus //hapo is a museum whose own development directly reflects the formative processes of an

emergent nation. It is the result of an extended and highly structured process of consultation with groups

that represent diverse aspects of South African society. As such, even in construction //hapo and the other 

elements of the site repeatedly trigger often-painful discussions that occasionally spill into the national

discourse within and among those groups. When complete, it is envisioned as an active platform on which

narratives, particularly those that have been suppressed or dissociated by traumatic experience, can be

 brought together and made available to a national dialogue. In this way, //hapo and its accompanying Pan

African Archive are intended to function both as listening posts that amplify what is already present in

society but has remained largely inaccessible, and as platforms that represent the whole of society through

what they have gathered together. //hapo is not, and cannot be representative of a canonical narrative—not

only because such a canon no longer exists but also because the vigorous, democratic atmosphere of 

contestation in modern South Africa would tolerate no such canon. The fundamental question with regard

to this new and significant institution, and the ultimate measure of its value, is what role it can or should

 play in the development of a new national and continental narrative. Simply stated: Can a heritage project

such as this simultaneously represent a nation-in-formation and positively affect the outcome of that

formation—an outcome that is far from assured? Can a museum foster reconciliation?

If museums are in fact representative of the groups that create them, then the way those groups

represent and relate to their larger societies is of central concern. The stakes are acutely significant, both

with respect to museums’ effect on society and to the opportunities lost if they fail to achieve relevance,

despite widespread expectation and extraordinary levels of investment. Such enterprises as the 9/11

Memorial Museum and The Freedom Park raise deep questions regarding the obligations of the creator 

communities to their larger communities (whose museum is it, anyway?) and deeper questions about the

 purpose of the museum as a representative authority or a pluralistic platform. Is the museum a teacher or a

mirror—or a blank slate upon which society writes its story? Can communities use museums to shape their 

own narratives? How can such a process be responsibly managed? The answers to these questions

determine the value of society’s investment in such museums, since it is no longer possible to deny that

they are both chroniclers and participants in ongoing processes of social formation.

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