Theme Leaders: Prof. Christa Maria Lerm-Hayes & Dr. Sanneke Stigter

Practices of creating, collecting, archiving, presenting and preserving art are not neutral practices, but choose, select and interact with objects, with memories, peoples, places and debates. We study memorialisation (e.g. performative embodiment), as well as the often contested interpretation and commodification of heritage, memory, and material culture. These practices include canonisation, musealisation, appropriation, restitution, and the (selective) care for or adaption of objects such as in conservation and restoration. In a globalising world, we reflect critically on their creation, mediation, institutionalisation and study as the social construction of the past and of future public memory.