Culture in for and as Sustainable Development

STORY 2
THE STORIES MUSEUMS TELL
Politics and uses of the past: Varied
narratives in the museums of Cyprus
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Cultural heritage is well known to be dynamic,
controversial and able to generate heated debates.
There are many arenas in which this can
happen, but one of the most common is the
museum, an institution created and maintained
to preserve and look after objects, stories and
memories from the past, a task which can never
be politically or ideologically neutral. Museums,
as places where heritage is not only preserved
(with issues of what to select) but also presented
and interpreted (with issues of which stories
to tell, which narratives to create) are often used
as tools for shaping national, local or community
identities in the context of particular policy discourses.
In some cases, they are even involved in
political battles. This story deals with Cyprus, a
country divided in two, amidst unresolved political
conflict, with a long history of cultural change
(Greek, Roman, Venetian, Ottoman, British etc.)
and a currently rapidly-changing economic and
social environment. It serves here as a good case
study to discuss the potential of museums to engage
in social dialogue in the face of xenophobic
and nationalistic movements throughout the
world.
Any museum usually integrates two
parallel narratives, such as global
and local, or nation and community.
It is however not clear whether museums
can succeed in sharing multiple
narratives and acknowledging its
relations with a variety of stakeholders.
In Cyprus, museums in the southern
part of the island (Greek-Cypriot)
tend to celebrate the island’s classical
Greek past. On the other hand, in
the northern part (Turkish-Cypriot)
the more recent, medieval and Ottoman
past takes its place, yet paradoxically with
space given, for example, to the culture of Greek
orthodox icon painting. How are heritage and culture
used in museums? Whose culture is it? For
what aims, and why? And how does this relate to
xenophobic or nationalist movements?
This is relevant as culture is the object of social
conflict. It also represents the interplay of policies
and politics of memory and forgetting. As a
result, power relationships may shape a museum’s
content and practices. Museums may exhibit
politically desired narratives and exclude or misrepresent
the heritage of ‘others’. Museums run
the risk of merely reflecting officially accepted
identities or the dominant ideologies of those in
power. A crucial question for the future is how
to ensure that those museums which keep local
heritage and cultural diversity alive become more
self-sustainable and not dependent on political
priorities.