Before the elections in Iraq, before any talk of withdrawing troops and amid continued fighting, the Americans proposed building a memorial museum in Baghdad documenting the atrocities of Saddam Hussein's regime.
While the plan was rejected by other countries (it was not a decision the Iraqi people were to make), the speed of the suggestion shows how popular memorial museums have become.
Museums that document trauma and conflict are important. Israel's national Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem (which inaugurated its New Museum in March) has, since its 1953 foundation, provided both authoritative exhibition and research facilities.
In the last 20 years, other memorial museums have proliferated across the globe. The list includes the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum in eastern China, Robben Island Museum in South Africa and the genocide mu-seums outside Kigali in Rwanda. In the United States, the Washington Holocaust Memorial Museum is one of many in that country.
James Young, the author of The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Their Meanings, puts the growth of memorial museums down to different trends that came together around the idea of global suffering: 'Some were stimulated by the passing and near-passing of survivors and changing regimes in Eastern Europe.'
He points to a change in the role museums play in society: 'There was also a tendency to see museums as places where communities can localise memories and build identity around stories.'
Young says other factors are the decline of national institutions, the crumbling of the church and the family. 'Everyone feels they have the right to tell their own stories and this is often done today through the identification with martyrdom and suffering.'
While the unique events memorialised and the specific circumstances of each mean that every museum is different, the increase in the number of memorial museums and the claims that are made for them is something that requires examination. Not everyone is comfortable with the trend. Of course, due to the nature of their subjects, they will disrupt and disturb, but is this always good for those they claim to help, the dominated?
And is the proliferation of such institutions a sign of a healthy society trying to understand and make amends, or one with an unhealthy obsession with the past and the worst aspects of man?
A common criticism is that the purpose - to stop such events happening again - fails. John Lennon, the co-author of Dark Tourism: The Attraction of Death and Disaster, complains: 'Never again does not work'.
For Lennon, erecting and visiting memorial museums can be a get-out clause for those not wanting to examine the real and present problems: 'It's easier to look at the dark heart of other nations and times than our own. What about discussing the state of immigration centres here today? That's more significant than the Imperial War Museum talking about the Holocaust.'
Lennon has a point: there are more Holocaust museums in America than any country, despite a tenuous relationship to the event, and they were created during periods when the country's leaders waged war on others. To date, the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington has been visited by 76 heads of state and government, many of who were engaged in unfriendly fire elsewhere.
But museum directors cannot be held responsible for this - although they should refrain from claiming their institutions can achieve so much. Presidents and prime ministers use memorial mu-seums to make them look good, so the criticism should be directed at them, not curators and education departments that examine the past.
Indeed when these museums do try to discuss the present they can run into problems. The Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam raises the threat of the far right in Europe today and racism in football; the Beit Hashoah Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles transports the concern with the Holocaust into a discussion about intolerance today.
Museum texts compare 'cursing and shoving your sister' to war and all audiences are lectured that 'the potential of violence is within us all'.
While intolerance exists today, it is not helpful to compare the Holocaust to a squabble between siblings: it distorts our understanding of the power relationships that built up in Europe and the state organisation of the attempted elimination of a population.
The comparison of the horrific events that led to the murder of Anne Frank to the reactionary, but far less powerful impact of the far right today, is an insult to her experience. It is possible that some institutions are too interested in comparisons to the present at the expense of understanding the gravity and specificity of the past.
Susan Jacoby, the author of Half-Jew: A Daughter's Search for Her Family's Buried Past has other concerns. She argues that visits are a temporary trip in people's happier lives making them feel morally right-on: 'These museums are problematic because they leave tourists with a self-satisfied glow at having given up a day of ordinary sightseeing and shopping for an exhibit of Hell on Earth.'
Other critics have questioned the use of multimedia in these museums, which are often full of interactive exhibits, sound effects and films.
But these complaints can underestimate the intentions of the audiences. Visitors are not on jaunts to ace cafes with good museums attached: high levels of emotion are induced and contemplation takes place. In fact most of these museums aim to relate to the individual through their emotions.
It is this aspect of them that is especially interesting, suggests Edward T Linenthal, author of Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America's Holocaust Museum. 'What is new,' he says, 'is the individual focus with the emphasis on the emotions. This therapeutic turn is different to the previous civic ideas at the heart of museums.'
For example, at the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, South Africa, visitors receive a card arbitrarily assigning them a racial classification: white or non-white. It encourages them to personally relate to the story they are told.
Many of these museums have been architecturally designed to manipulate. Daniel Libeskind's design for Berlin's Jewish Museum has passages cambered at slight angles, the ensuing destabilisation only hinting at disorientation of the Nazis' victims.
At the Washington Holocaust Memorial Museum, the entrance to the permanent exhibition reminds people of a concentration camp: the elevators are claustrophobic, with stark lighting, exposed metal, and low ceilings. A video monitor plays a clip of liberators arriving at the camp. A voice says: 'We don't know what it is; some sort of prison.' As it stops, the doors open and people walk into the elevator.
While they are not cattle cars, there is no doubt that they recall them. It is a brutal experience.
The audience is treated as if its empathy can only be triggered by turning the experience of others into versions of what is happening to them. A gallery space that forces the visitor to bend down and uses harsh lighting is nasty but radically different from the places it is supposed to represent.
The visitor is encouraged to think about 'me', not them, now, not then. This may trivialise what happened, reducing the understanding of the conflict to a bad 'reality museum' experience.
But, for sociologists Nicola Lisus and Richard Ericson, the spectacle of multimedia turns the Beit Hashoah Museum of Tolerance into an 'emotions factory'. 'It is not clear whether people will feel the need to translate their emotions into knowledge useful for the prevention of genocide,' they write.
Alternatively, many think that relating to others through emotion creates a connection with the victims. Some go so far as to argue that the concept of suffering provides a way for a fragmented world to create meaning.
Jeffrey Alexander, a sociologist at Yale University, has written about this. He asks: 'Is the suffering of others also our own?' He continues: 'In thinking that it might in fact be, societies expand the circle of the we... By refusing to participate in what I will describe as the process of trauma creation, social groups restrict solidarity leaving others to suffer alone.'
In Alexander's view, suffering can help provide meaning and understanding with others today.
Edward T Linenthal says: 'When I was writing about the Holocaust Museum it became clear that there was recognition as prestige in being a victim. All sorts of groups who were previously uninterested in saying they were part of the experience now want to be defined as such.'
According to Linenthal, we have to be careful of this trend and cautious of elevating the value of trauma. Sometimes closure or forgetting is appropriate. 'Promoting the line that my ancestors were slaves as a crutch or a weapon would not be good. Competing over how hurt your people were is not constructive.
At times it is good for people to move on. Sometimes forgetting is good.' However, Linethanal does thinks that the memorial museum message can be a good one. '[If it] ... makes us more humble, exposes the distance between reality and ideals, then it is remembering in a constructive way,' he believes.
In the past, national myths presented in traditional museums promoted the idea of the unique greatness of peoples. It was a one-sided history that reinforced the position of the powerful at the expense of the trodden-on. In this respect it is right that the kings and the generals have been knocked off their pedestals. But it is not necessarily right that this version of history has been replaced by so many stories of suffering.
This is not to deny suffering; it happens, and will continue to do so. But how we understand it matters to our understanding of the past and our attitude towards the future. Firstly, we should steer clear of promoting suffering as a way to connect to others. It is not a hopeful vision for the future or what makes us human.
One problem is that it suggests the past defines the future; but the past does not have to determine what happens. Another problem is that it mis- represents the hope and struggle of those who fought for freedom and equality.
Paul Robeson, the black American singer and activist, often changed the lyrics of songs. He altered Old Man River, from the musical Show Boat, in way that is relevant here.
Instead of 'Git a little drunk and you land in jail. Ah gits weary, an' sick of tryin' ah'm tired of livin' and scared of dying', Robeson sang, 'You show a little grit and you land in jail. But I keeps laughin' instead of cryin' I must keep fighting until I'm dying.' The attitude in the rewritten lyrics is dramatically different. His spirit is tough and strong.
Of course we need museums that show us the brutal past - because it happened and we need to understand it. But we should be careful not to elevate the suffering of people over their struggle in the search for meaning today. mj
Tiffany Jenkins is the director of arts and
society at the London-based Institute of Ideas
While the plan was rejected by other countries (it was not a decision the Iraqi people were to make), the speed of the suggestion shows how popular memorial museums have become.
Museums that document trauma and conflict are important. Israel's national Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem (which inaugurated its New Museum in March) has, since its 1953 foundation, provided both authoritative exhibition and research facilities.
In the last 20 years, other memorial museums have proliferated across the globe. The list includes the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum in eastern China, Robben Island Museum in South Africa and the genocide mu-seums outside Kigali in Rwanda. In the United States, the Washington Holocaust Memorial Museum is one of many in that country.
James Young, the author of The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Their Meanings, puts the growth of memorial museums down to different trends that came together around the idea of global suffering: 'Some were stimulated by the passing and near-passing of survivors and changing regimes in Eastern Europe.'
He points to a change in the role museums play in society: 'There was also a tendency to see museums as places where communities can localise memories and build identity around stories.'
Young says other factors are the decline of national institutions, the crumbling of the church and the family. 'Everyone feels they have the right to tell their own stories and this is often done today through the identification with martyrdom and suffering.'
While the unique events memorialised and the specific circumstances of each mean that every museum is different, the increase in the number of memorial museums and the claims that are made for them is something that requires examination. Not everyone is comfortable with the trend. Of course, due to the nature of their subjects, they will disrupt and disturb, but is this always good for those they claim to help, the dominated?
And is the proliferation of such institutions a sign of a healthy society trying to understand and make amends, or one with an unhealthy obsession with the past and the worst aspects of man?
A common criticism is that the purpose - to stop such events happening again - fails. John Lennon, the co-author of Dark Tourism: The Attraction of Death and Disaster, complains: 'Never again does not work'.
For Lennon, erecting and visiting memorial museums can be a get-out clause for those not wanting to examine the real and present problems: 'It's easier to look at the dark heart of other nations and times than our own. What about discussing the state of immigration centres here today? That's more significant than the Imperial War Museum talking about the Holocaust.'
Lennon has a point: there are more Holocaust museums in America than any country, despite a tenuous relationship to the event, and they were created during periods when the country's leaders waged war on others. To date, the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington has been visited by 76 heads of state and government, many of who were engaged in unfriendly fire elsewhere.
But museum directors cannot be held responsible for this - although they should refrain from claiming their institutions can achieve so much. Presidents and prime ministers use memorial mu-seums to make them look good, so the criticism should be directed at them, not curators and education departments that examine the past.
Indeed when these museums do try to discuss the present they can run into problems. The Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam raises the threat of the far right in Europe today and racism in football; the Beit Hashoah Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles transports the concern with the Holocaust into a discussion about intolerance today.
Museum texts compare 'cursing and shoving your sister' to war and all audiences are lectured that 'the potential of violence is within us all'.
While intolerance exists today, it is not helpful to compare the Holocaust to a squabble between siblings: it distorts our understanding of the power relationships that built up in Europe and the state organisation of the attempted elimination of a population.
The comparison of the horrific events that led to the murder of Anne Frank to the reactionary, but far less powerful impact of the far right today, is an insult to her experience. It is possible that some institutions are too interested in comparisons to the present at the expense of understanding the gravity and specificity of the past.
Susan Jacoby, the author of Half-Jew: A Daughter's Search for Her Family's Buried Past has other concerns. She argues that visits are a temporary trip in people's happier lives making them feel morally right-on: 'These museums are problematic because they leave tourists with a self-satisfied glow at having given up a day of ordinary sightseeing and shopping for an exhibit of Hell on Earth.'
Other critics have questioned the use of multimedia in these museums, which are often full of interactive exhibits, sound effects and films.
But these complaints can underestimate the intentions of the audiences. Visitors are not on jaunts to ace cafes with good museums attached: high levels of emotion are induced and contemplation takes place. In fact most of these museums aim to relate to the individual through their emotions.
It is this aspect of them that is especially interesting, suggests Edward T Linenthal, author of Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America's Holocaust Museum. 'What is new,' he says, 'is the individual focus with the emphasis on the emotions. This therapeutic turn is different to the previous civic ideas at the heart of museums.'
For example, at the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, South Africa, visitors receive a card arbitrarily assigning them a racial classification: white or non-white. It encourages them to personally relate to the story they are told.
Many of these museums have been architecturally designed to manipulate. Daniel Libeskind's design for Berlin's Jewish Museum has passages cambered at slight angles, the ensuing destabilisation only hinting at disorientation of the Nazis' victims.
At the Washington Holocaust Memorial Museum, the entrance to the permanent exhibition reminds people of a concentration camp: the elevators are claustrophobic, with stark lighting, exposed metal, and low ceilings. A video monitor plays a clip of liberators arriving at the camp. A voice says: 'We don't know what it is; some sort of prison.' As it stops, the doors open and people walk into the elevator.
While they are not cattle cars, there is no doubt that they recall them. It is a brutal experience.
The audience is treated as if its empathy can only be triggered by turning the experience of others into versions of what is happening to them. A gallery space that forces the visitor to bend down and uses harsh lighting is nasty but radically different from the places it is supposed to represent.
The visitor is encouraged to think about 'me', not them, now, not then. This may trivialise what happened, reducing the understanding of the conflict to a bad 'reality museum' experience.
But, for sociologists Nicola Lisus and Richard Ericson, the spectacle of multimedia turns the Beit Hashoah Museum of Tolerance into an 'emotions factory'. 'It is not clear whether people will feel the need to translate their emotions into knowledge useful for the prevention of genocide,' they write.
Alternatively, many think that relating to others through emotion creates a connection with the victims. Some go so far as to argue that the concept of suffering provides a way for a fragmented world to create meaning.
Jeffrey Alexander, a sociologist at Yale University, has written about this. He asks: 'Is the suffering of others also our own?' He continues: 'In thinking that it might in fact be, societies expand the circle of the we... By refusing to participate in what I will describe as the process of trauma creation, social groups restrict solidarity leaving others to suffer alone.'
In Alexander's view, suffering can help provide meaning and understanding with others today.
Edward T Linenthal says: 'When I was writing about the Holocaust Museum it became clear that there was recognition as prestige in being a victim. All sorts of groups who were previously uninterested in saying they were part of the experience now want to be defined as such.'
According to Linenthal, we have to be careful of this trend and cautious of elevating the value of trauma. Sometimes closure or forgetting is appropriate. 'Promoting the line that my ancestors were slaves as a crutch or a weapon would not be good. Competing over how hurt your people were is not constructive.
At times it is good for people to move on. Sometimes forgetting is good.' However, Linethanal does thinks that the memorial museum message can be a good one. '[If it] ... makes us more humble, exposes the distance between reality and ideals, then it is remembering in a constructive way,' he believes.
In the past, national myths presented in traditional museums promoted the idea of the unique greatness of peoples. It was a one-sided history that reinforced the position of the powerful at the expense of the trodden-on. In this respect it is right that the kings and the generals have been knocked off their pedestals. But it is not necessarily right that this version of history has been replaced by so many stories of suffering.
This is not to deny suffering; it happens, and will continue to do so. But how we understand it matters to our understanding of the past and our attitude towards the future. Firstly, we should steer clear of promoting suffering as a way to connect to others. It is not a hopeful vision for the future or what makes us human.
One problem is that it suggests the past defines the future; but the past does not have to determine what happens. Another problem is that it mis- represents the hope and struggle of those who fought for freedom and equality.
Paul Robeson, the black American singer and activist, often changed the lyrics of songs. He altered Old Man River, from the musical Show Boat, in way that is relevant here.
Instead of 'Git a little drunk and you land in jail. Ah gits weary, an' sick of tryin' ah'm tired of livin' and scared of dying', Robeson sang, 'You show a little grit and you land in jail. But I keeps laughin' instead of cryin' I must keep fighting until I'm dying.' The attitude in the rewritten lyrics is dramatically different. His spirit is tough and strong.
Of course we need museums that show us the brutal past - because it happened and we need to understand it. But we should be careful not to elevate the suffering of people over their struggle in the search for meaning today. mj
Tiffany Jenkins is the director of arts and
society at the London-based Institute of Ideas
