How can we exhibit the dreams and nightmares of the Cold War through material objects?
In Europe and the North Atlantic, the Cold War was not a contest fought on battlefields, with tanks, guns, bullets and missiles. Rather, it was conducted through an arms race that imagined such military conflicts – through practices which were infused with ideologies, and through symbolic contestations about the meaning of everyday objects. Our project seeks to investigate what this specific feature of the Cold War means for exhibiting objects from this period in museums – a process that we call materialising the Cold War.
We will assess collections, analyse existing displays, and evaluate user responses in order to understand and then change how the Cold War is produced and consumed in UK museums. We want to blend museum theory and practice by addressing four objectives.
1: To conceptualise the manifestations and representations of an imagined conflict in museums, to find how the characteristics of the Cold War find fixed representations with and around objects, and how these have been negotiated (especially compared to the World Wars).
2: To analyse the relationship between museum objects related to the Cold War and visitors’ experiences, especially in relation to ‘fearsome heritage’. In particular we are interested in any difference in engagement between those who remember the Cold War and those who have no experience of it.
3: To develop a trans-disciplinary approach to the theory and practice of Cold War heritage in the context of museology and museum practice by drawing on, combining, and in turn enriching strands of research that have so far remained separate from each other. This will involve considering how objects can reveal the relationship between society, technology, and the military.
4: To apply co-productive museum methodologies involving curators, academics and user communities, thereby enhancing links between heritage practice and the heritage studies research community and furthering the AHRC’s Heritage Priority.