Migration in exhibitions. Bottlenecks, fissures and boom cycles in the knowledge regime of Germany’s “migration society”

In 2009, one of Germany’s leading museum historians and curators, Joachim Baur, stated that “migration has become a subject for museums”. Indeed, the theme of migration to Germany had not been a priority for the vast majority of municipal and state museums of cultural history for many years. However, since the turn of the century, we have seen a tangible boom in the subject of migration as a theme of museum exhibitions. With these developments in mind, this doctoral project takes up a knowledge-anthropological and migration-studies perspective to examine the key paradigms, narratives, structural conditions and discursive cycles under which migration became a key subject in Germany’s exhibition complex as well as the manner in which it is being handled at the moment.

One of the most important elements to be examined here – to a greater extent than ever before – is the knowledge production undertaken by actors who have long since called on museums to thematise migration as an integral part of German history. In some cases, these actors have been making efforts along these lines since the 1960s. The questions to be answered are the following: Why is it so difficult to get museums as institutions to open themselves up to questions of migration and racism? Why is it harder with museums than with other cultural institutions? What knowledge becomes (ir)relevant and what knowledge becomes (in)visible? Can we make out any major paradigm shifts over the past 50 years?

Yet another essential question that must be answered is how exactly the subject of migration has been taken up and thematised in exhibitions in the context of the recent boom in the popularity of the subject at museums. In this case, our aim is to analyse the gap between contemporary insights and concept developments emerging from the realm of cultural studies and social research into migration, and also to look at the dominant ways of thematising migration-related issues in exhibitions. In this sense, the project will also examine the reasons for certain absences on thematic and structural levels, with a particular analysis of the institutions and regimes involved. This investigation will be based on the present-day situation and take a comparative look at exhibition practices in museums as well as in academic and activist spheres since the 1980s.

Baur, Joachim (2009): “Flüchtige Spuren - bewegte Geschichten. Zur Darstellung von Migration in Museen und Ausstellungen” (tr. Fleeting traces – moving stories. The portrayal of migration in museums and exhibitions). In: DOMiD (ed.): Inventur Migration. Tagungsdokumentation (tr. Inventory migration. Conference documentation). Cologne: self-published, p. 14–26.


Project supervision: Prof. Sabine Hess, Institute for Cultural Anthropology/ European Ethnology, Georg August University Göttingen

Museum: Historisches Museum Frankfurt