Genocide and Relevance: Current Trends in United States Holocaust Museums

Abstract

This article argues that Holocaust museums create connections between Holocaust memory and the traumatic pasts of many nations and cultures in pursuit of a multidirectional museology of relevance that reflects the diversity of American society and exemplifies the museums’ collective function as moral institutions in the United States. The article cites empirical evidence and curatorial decisions but also analyzes museum practices through the lens of post-Holocaust Jewish moral thought. It offers an ethical and philosophical framework against which museums’ curatorial and philosophical choices can be examined. It documents and analyzes the way that Holocaust museums both filter and prompt the key questions being faced in Holocaust institutions and by the Jewish community today. Three major issues are examined: how museums address the subject of modern genocide, how they attempt to create relevance, and how they maintain a distinct emphasis on the Holocaust. Methodologically, the project relies upon three approaches to assist me in answering questions such as the ones above. First, I employ empirical analysis as it has been developed in the field of cultural anthropology and engage in close examinations of multiple United States Holocaust museums – through on-site visits, interviews with senior staff, a study of web materials, and close analysis of museum documents. The second approach is historical analysis; the literature of the field is used as secondary source material that sheds light on the decisions made in the museums and on the history of their development. Finally, there is a philosophical analysis of the empirical and historical data and the patterns documented, employing various philosophical and ethical approaches to articulate a museology of relevance. Through the use of these approaches, this article theorizes about the future of Holocaust museums.