Belgium and France

The remembrance of the First World War is ubiquitous. We are interested in the museological dimension of this topic and together with the historian Jay Winter we are going to embark on a journey that takes us to former battlefields, cemeteries, memorials and museums from Brussels to Paris. We are primarily interested in the specific conditions of commemoration and communication today. What does it mean when the landscape, as one of the last tangible witnesses, is treated as the central object? How can a balance be struck between leaving the traces and relics of the front regions in situ and their (necessary) display? Since memory is always rooted in its time, we can ask which original objects and images are currently being contextualized and presented and how? Has the socio-historical interest in the topic come to supersede that of military history and weaponry? How can justice be done to the local war and personal suffering in light of the scale of the European and global consequences? Are experience-based forms of display the only appropriate ones for displaying war and violence today? And what task has society set the selected institutions and museums?

Conception and design
Jay Winter Professor of History, Yale University, New Haven (USA)