Session 05- Museology of reconciliation / Muséologie de la réconciliation

"Al Bitar is an art historian and a museologist. He started recalling the book of Nina Simon (2010), The Participatory Museum, and gave the example of the Migration Museum in Brussels. It is a new museum that opened at the end of 2019 created by a non-profit organisation. This museum offers a permanent place for the stories of the first generation of immigrants, with a collection that is constantly renewed, every six or eight months, with a participatory approach.
Then, Delaplace – PhD in Museum studies and heritage – presented her dissertation whose goals is to highlight the representation of immigration in permanent exhibitions, through the analysis of three museums of history dedicated to immigration: the Ellis Island Immigration Museum in New York, the National Museum of the History of Immigration in Paris, and the Museum of Immigration in São Paulo, Brazil. She focused on the third one, pointing out the importance to ask how do spaces of representation stage the history of immigration. It is not only a matter of communities that share their personal story and their personal objects, but also how the objects of memory are presented in these exhibitions alongside with the local, national and international history.
Still remaining in São Paulo, during the fifth webinar the Babel Tower hosted Gabriela Aidar, who coordinates the Inclusive Educational Programs at the Education Department of the Pinacoteca de São Paulo. Aidar discussed some challenges and opportunities related with developing socially engaged practices in traditional museums through the experience of the Pinacoteca. She presented the example of the social educational practices that the Education Department has carried out with groups of homeless people, with incarcerated people, with schools, and with fragile people carrying physical and mental disabilities. Aidar pointed out how activating inclusive museological practices in traditional institutions is a challenge due to the rigid organisational structures, logics of operation and power within the more traditional museums, but it is worthwhile to try as a matter of social justice." Giusy Pappalardo