Interaction Between the Secular and the Religious: The Exhibition Latvia’s Century at the National History Museum of Latvia

Abstract

The paper focuses on the interaction between the secular and the religious in the exhibition Latvia’s Century, dedicated to the centenary of the Republic of Latvia, with its narrative being developed by the National History Museum of Latvia. When analyzing the qualitative data obtained through collecting visual information, and undertaking face-to-face in-depth expert interviews and observations, the author explains how the curators have positioned religious objects chronologically in a specific social and political context by using storytelling as the exhibition’s primary interpretative strategy. Compared to the previous period of activity (1945–1990), when the museum was an institution of Soviet ideology, the National History Museum of Latvia has currently developed a new paradigm for the evaluation and interpretation of religion and religious objects. Alongside ethnicity, politics and language, the curators have identified religion as the most important element in Latvia’s formation process. Religion is interpreted as one of Latvia’s constitutive elements in the exhibition, emphasizing that it was society’s major cohesive force in the past, influencing the development of national identity and defining the territorial borders of the Republic of Latvia.