Museums and religious heritage. Post-colonial and post-socialist perspectives
Résumé
How do museums manage the heritage of confessional groups and the source communities whose cultures they present? What are the convergences and tensions in the relationship between museums and religions? How does lived religion enter secular museums, and what can we make of its presence there? The issue explores these questions through case studies from post-colonial and post-socialist contexts. In these diverse but in many ways comparable configurations, various museums increasingly take into account the voices of source communities and confessional groups. Originally secular institutions, museums have become more permeable to spiritual, cosmological, and confessional perspectives. We argue here that changes in practices of display and conservation are connected to major political and epistemic transformations, such as decolonisation and the return of religion to public life after the end of socialism.