Curating Human Rights: Displaying, Combating and Obscuring Human Rights Violations in Museums

Curating Human Rights conceptualizes the human rights museum as a dynamic cultural-political genre that interacts with multiple social activist, state and corporate stakeholders.

Drawing upon ethnographic and archival research on seven human rights museums in six countries, Ostow examines specifically what these museums do when they set out, or purport, to promote human rights. This includes the stories they visualize, display strategies, educational and other activities, internal structures, the way they position their visitors, the parameters of the human rights they address and the politics of pleasing their multiple stakeholders. The book also explores the contradictions and political and corporate pressure that contributes to foregrounding some human rights violations and ignoring or obscuring others. Ostow also examines the reactions to each museum in the local and national press, and by local visitors, politicians, donors and other stakeholders. The book ends with a discussion of the success and limitations of museums for promoting human rights, and policy recommendations to enhance their effectiveness. Curating Human Rights considers whether these museums are appropriate for, and effective at, promoting human rights - and if they address the pitfalls that have been identified.

Curating Human Rights provides new perspectives on the field of human rights education and activism and will be of interest to academics and students engaged in the study of museums, human rights, culture and communication.

Robin Ostow is affiliated with the Sociology Department at Wilfrid Laurier University, in Ontario, Canada. She has published extensively on national museums, Jewish museums, immigration museums and human rights museums in Europe, the Americas and Australia. Most recently, her work has focused on these museums’ displays and their relations with the communities around them.