Museums are pre-eminent sites of memory. Though diverse in terms of nature, specialization, approach, scalar remit, or even more prosaically, size and financial support, museums are sites where the past is awakened through the use of collections, archives, and tangible and intangible culture. They are sites where a common narrative is projected, encapsulating historical trajectories with their foundational or pivotal moments through the selection of dates, defining events, processes, and symbols—thus contributing to the construction of “imagined communities” (Anderson). As such, they participate in shaping a form of cultural memory, defined by Jan Assmann as a “body of reusable texts, images and rituals specific to each society in each epoch, whose ‘cultivation’ serves to stabilize and convey that society’s self-image.”
Key words: imagined communities; museum; new museographical approaches; visitors’ imagination.
BIBLIOGRAPHIE
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SITE
ICOM (Conseil International des Musée) http://icom.museum/la-vision/definition-du-musee/L/2/.