The Archaeological Museum as an Engaged Museum: Strategies and Scenarios for Critical Exhibitions on the Past and Possible Futures.

The new definition of the museum proposed at the 2019 ICOM Congress in Kyoto stated that the institution is to promote critical dialogue on pasts and futures. In its role as a democratic and inclusive forum, the contemporary museum confronts global and local issues that guide emerging exhibitions. Current topics include the relationship with technology, the Anthropocene and the climate crisis, post-capitalism, epistemic justice, and decolonization.
In my talk, I would like to consider the possibility of addressing contemporary issues of the global world in archaeological exhibitions. Instead of focusing on a critical approach to archaeological exhibitions, which are often accused of conservatism and anachronism, I will focus on affirmative scenarios and explore new means and media that serve to create engaged, critical and future-oriented presentations of prehistoric and ancient monuments. I will compare and contrast three strategies that we can currently observe in archaeological museums in Europe. I will therefore discuss multimedia stories about the past and their decolonizing potential. I will also point to the potential of contemporary artists’ interventions in the past and the possibilities of engaged art for revising traditional archaeology. Finally, I will refer to archaeological “grand narratives” concerning the past and its significance for the future. These three strategies will serve to predict what futures may await engaged archaeological museums.

Dr Monika Stobiecka – art historian and archaeologist, assistant professor at the Faculty of “Artes Liberales” at the University of Warsaw, member of the Academy of Young Scholars of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Winner of the “Diamond Grant” of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (2014). Scholarship holder of the Lanckoroński Foundation from Brzezie (2016), the Kościuszko Foundation (2018) and the Foundation for Polish Science (2019). Finalist of the scientific awards competition of the weekly “Polityka” (2020). Her book “The Nature of the Artefact, the Culture of the Exhibit. Project of a Critical Archaeological Museum” (IBL PAN Publishing House 2020) was awarded in 2021 in the Anna Ziedler-Janiszewska competition for the best book debut organized by the Committee on Cultural Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences. She is interested in museum studies, critical heritage studies, and the theory and methodology of archaeology.