National Heritage & Traumatic Memory (NHTM)

explores how arts-based practices can help circumvent institutional constraints and engage communities via non-traditional sites and performative modes of display and participation. Working primarily in Poland, NHTM considers how histories of colonialism, the Holocaust, and communism meet, and develops forms of reflection, redress, and repair to address this geographical region’s violently-lost historical diversity. NHTM develops context-sensitive concepts and tools to expand critical museology’s Western-centrism, and collaborates across clusters to develop minority artist residencies, a comparative genocide workshop with the National Museum of the American Indian and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, and other resources to engage Poland’s marginalized Jewish, Roma, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, African-diaspora, LGBTQ+ and refugee communities under an increasingly authoritarian government.

(Partners: Centrum Cyfrowy; FestivALT; National Museum of the American Indian; Polin Museum; Teatr Powszechny)

projects

Featured
TTTM Exhibitions
TTTM Exhibitions
Minority Artist’s Residency at Polin Museum
Minority Artist’s Residency at Polin Museum

To increase the visibility of non-White / non-Catholic contributions to Polish culture and heritage, TTTM’s National Heritage and Traumatic Memory cluster offers an annual minority artist’s residency at Polin Museum in Warsaw, co-sponsored by Partner Organizations FestivALT and Teatr Powszechny. Our first edition in Spring 2022 welcomes Jewish trans artist Tobaron Waxman (Canada), whose work raises questions about how citizenship makes moral and ethical claims upon our bodies.

Trauma, Memory, and Material Culture: NMAI + USHMM in Dialogue
Trauma, Memory, and Material Culture: NMAI + USHMM in Dialogue

In a groundbreaking collaboration, TTTM is partnering with the National Museum of the American Indian and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum - both in Washington, DC - on a five-day workshop to discuss what the legacies of mass violence and oppression mean to Indigenous and Jewish people, and what they can learn from each other regarding approaches to museum collections, cultural heritage caretaking, and the preservation of historical memory.

Exhibiting Theory Book Series
Exhibiting Theory Book Series

Exhibiting Theory is a multi-lingual, open-access book series presenting humanities and social science theory and method relevant for and generated from museum interventions, performances, and curatorial experiments developed in partnerships linking academia with the museum and heritage sector.

Decolonial Museology Re­centered: Thinking Theory and Practice through East­-Central Europe
Decolonial Museology Re­centered: Thinking Theory and Practice through East­-Central Europe

Decolonial Museology Re­centered (DMR) addresses the lack of decolonial discourse in the Polish museum landscape and helps develop critical museology in Poland in both theory and in practice.