Karen Busby - The Idea of a Human Rights Museum

Karen Busby, Adam Muller, and Andrew Woolford, editors

THE IDEA OF A

Human Rights Museum

EDITED BY KAREN BUSBY, ADAM MULLER, AND ANDREW WOOLFORD

University of Manitoba Press

Winnipeg, Manitoba

Canada R3T 2M5

uofmpress.ca

The Authors 2015

Printed in Canada

Text printed on chlorine-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper

19 18 17 16 15 1 2 3 4 5

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database and retrieval system in Canada, without the prior written permission of the University of Manitoba Press, or, in the case of photocopying or any other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca, or call 1-800-893-5777.

Cover image: Design sketch of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights by Antoine Predock

Cover and interior design: Jess Koroscil

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

The idea of a human rights museum / Karen Busby, Adam Muller, and Andrew Woolford, editors.

(Human rights and social justice series, 2291-6024 ; 1) Includes bibliographical references.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-0-88755-782-8 (pbk.)

ISBN 978-0-88755-471-1 (pdf ).

ISBN 978-0-88755-469-8 (epub)

1. Canadian Museum for Human Rights. 2. Human rightsMuseums Social aspects. 3. Human rightsMuseumsPolitical aspects. 4. Museum architecture. 5. Museum exhibits. I. Busby, Karen, 1958, author, editor II. Woolford, Andrew, 1971, author, editor III. Muller, Adam, 1968, author, editor IV. Title: Human rights museum. V. Series: Human rights and social justice series ; 1

AM101.W45I34 2015 323.074712743 C2015-903490-6 C2015-903491-4

The University of Manitoba Press gratefully acknowledges the financial support for its publication program provided by the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Department of Culture, Heritage, Tourism, the Manitoba Arts Council, and the Manitoba Book Publishing Tax Credit.

CONTENTS

THE IDEA OF A HUMAN RIGHTS MUSEUM

SPATIALIZATION AND DESIGN

Process Images: Designing the Canadian Museum for Human Rights

CURATORIAL CHALLENGES

PARALLELS AND OBLIGATIONS

FRONTISPIECE. Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

Courtesy of CMHR .

Courtesy of CMHR .

PROCESS IMAGES:

Designing the Canadian Museum for Human Rights

When the Canadian Museum for Human Rights ( CMHR ) opened its doors in the fall of 2014, it realized many of the ambitions of its visionary originator, Winnipeg businessman and philanthropist Israel (Izzy) Asper. Asper launched his private initiative in April 2003, but his ambitions were shared by many Canadians who, individually as well as collectively through their professional unions, charitable organizations, and places of work, donated funds to supplement those provided by the Canadian and Manitoban governments to bring this institution to life. The CMHR , via its special emphasis on Canadian human rights history and challenges, which it aims to place in a global context, seeks to inspire new generations of human rights proponents and leaders while serving as an important hub for scholarly work on human rights triumphs and tragedies.

Over the past two decades, self-identified human rights museums have opened around the world; they even established their own organization in 2010, the Federation of International Human Rights Museums. Some institutions, such as the Kigali Memorial Centre in Rwanda and the Maison des Esclaves in Senegal, focus on specific gross human rights abuses while others, such as the Museo Memoria y Tolerancia in Mexico City, promote a human rights culture but are not responses to specific events. As various contributors to this volume observe, the specific missions of these institutions range from social reconciliation, reparation, symbolic memorialization, calling to action, or providing the opportunity for what Piotr Cywinski, director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, describes in an interview with contributor Amanda Grzyb as a deep private individual experience. These missions can shift in response to the evolving concerns of an ever-changing present. As Ruth Phillips acknowledges in her contribution, the mandates of museums and heritage organizations are historically specific and change over time. Imposed through the oversight of government departments and the museum boards and administrators whom they appoint, they reflect priorities that those bodies identify as necessary to the creation of an informed citizenry. We find this commitment to informed citizenship highlighted in the CMHR s statutory mandate, which states that the museum will enhance the publics understanding of human rights, promote respect for others, and encourage reflection and dialogue.

This book grew out of a successful year-long seminar series organized in 201112 by the three editors of this volume under the auspices of the University of Manitobas Centre for Human Rights Research. Titled Critical Conversations on the Idea of a Human Rights Museum, it was open to the public and podcasted. Manitobans were rightly excited about the unusual building then under construction at the edge of Winnipegs downtown, but they wanted to be better informed about the controversies swirling around so many aspects of the structure, including building cost overruns, exhibition content, allegations of political and board interference, and high staff turnover rates. Many shared contributor David Petraseks view that, where the risks of manipulation are too high, and the promise of curatorial independence and courage too low, we should be sceptical about the value of a human rights museum. In 2008, the federal government announced that, while the CMHR would become a national museum and the Canadian government would pick up its operating costs, the balance of the building costs would have to be raised privately. Although addressing several long-standing worries about the museum, and relieving some of its financial burden, nationalization of the CMHR raised a series of new concerns, notably over the effects that federal oversight would have on museum content and on the precise emplotment of the human rights narrative that it would tell. Carter captures something of these anxieties when she asks: Is this new generation of museums deployed as a political instrument to promote the interests of the state or as a forum for dialogue to enrich civil society? Some scepticism was certainly warranted on this score, since the same government responsible for funding the operating budget of the museum and appointing its board had also cut funding for human rights advocacy and research elsewhere and consistently denied the brutal realities of Canadian settler colonialism. Against this complex and politically charged backdrop, the seminar series proved to be an ideal forum for engaged and informed discussion of the idea of a human rights museum, and it sustained nuanced conversations about the CMHR s mission, architecture, curatorial praxis, and decision-making and pedagogical approaches. These conversations are reflected in the majority of this volumes contributions, which were solicited from participants in the seminar series and, though refined and enlarged, deliberately kept compact in order to reflect the provisional and forward-looking qualities of the original oral presentations.