This article analyzes the role of human rights museums in fostering a common public understanding of rights at the grassroots level. It explores how these museums engage with societal contradictions through museological techniques, exhibition narratives, and intense interactions with communities. The study also discusses how human rights museums form communities to create a ‘legal common sense’ around questions of marginality and disputes. By examining the societal influence, legal mandates and community-building initiatives, it is argued that human rights museums work to deepen our understanding of how cultural actions can make human rights accessible to the public through the notion of ‘negative justice’.
AndermannJ (2012) Showcasing dictatorship: Memory and the museum in Argentina and Chile. Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society4(2): 69–93.
2.
AndersonS (2018) The construction of national identity and the curation of difficult knowledge at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Museum Management and Curatorship33(4): 320–343.
3.
AssmannASchwarzA (2013) Memory, migration and guilt. Crossings: Journal of Migration & Culture4(1): 51–65.
4.
BennettT (1995) The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics. London: Routledge.
5.
BennettT (2005) Civic laboratories: Museums, cultural objecthood and the governance of the social. Cultural Studies19(5): 521–547.
6.
BusbyKMullerAWoolfordA (eds) (2015) The Idea of a Human Rights Museum. Winnipeg, MB, Canada: University of Manitoba Press.
7.
CarterJOrangeJ (2012) Contentious terrain: Defining a human rights museology. Museum Management and Curatorship27(2): 111–127.
8.
DuffyTM (2001) Museums of ‘human suffering’ and the struggle for human rights. Museum International53(1): 10–16.
9.
Erni (2019) Law and Cultural Studies: A Critical Rearticulation of Human Rights. New York and London: Routledge.
10.
Erni (ed.) (2011) Cultural Studies of Rights. New York and London: Routledge.
11.
EstefaneA (2013) Materiality and politics in Chile’s Museum of Memory and Human Rights. Thresholds41: 158–171.
12.
FrazierLJ (1999) ‘Subverted memories’: Countermourning as political action in Chile. In: BalMCreweJSpitzerL (eds) Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present. Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College, pp.105–199.
13.
HalpinMM (2007) ‘Play it again, Sam’: Reflections of a new museology. In: WatsonS (ed.) Museums and Their Communities. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, pp.47–52.
14.
HamberB (2012) Conflict museums, nostalgia, and dreaming of never again. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology18(3): 268–281.
15.
HiteKCollinsC (2009) Memorial fragments, monumental silences and reawakenings in 21st century Chile. Millennium: Journal of International Studies38(2): 379–400.
16.
JanesRR (2007) Museums, corporatism and the civil society. Curator50(2): 219–237.
MurphyBL (ed.) (2016) Museums, Ethics and Cultural Heritage. New York: Routledge.
20.
OpotowS (2011a) Absence and presence: Interpreting moral exclusion in the Jewish Museum Berlin. In: KalsEMaesJ (eds) Justice and Conflicts: Theoretical and Empirical Contributions. Dordrecht: Springer, pp.53–74.
21.
OpotowS (2011b) How this was possible: Interpreting the Holocaust. Journal of Social Issues67(1): 205–224.
22.
OpotowS (2015) Historicizing injustice: The museum of memory and human rights, Santiago, Chile. Journal of Social Issue71(2): 229–243.
23.
OrangeJA (2016) Translating law into practice: Museums and a human rights community of practice. Human Rights Quarterly38: 706–735.
24.
PintoM (2013) Pamela Masik and the forgotten exhibition: Controversy and cancellation at the museum of anthropology. Museum Anthropology36(1): 4–17.
25.
RableyJ (2008) Displacement: The Impact of Forced Removal on Memory Reconstruction at the District Six Museum and Beyond. Riga: VDM Verlag.
26.
RobinsonJC (2018) Coming undone: Protocols of emotion in Canadian human rights museology. In: SmithLWetherellMCampbellG (eds) Emotion, Affective Practices, and the Past in the Present (Vol. 1). 1st ed. New York: Routledge, pp.149–162.
27.
SandellR (2017) Museums, Moralities and Human Rights. New York: Routledge.
28.
SevcenkoL (2002) Activating the past for civic action: The International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience. The George Wright Forum19(4): 55–64.
29.
SodaroA (2018) Exhibiting Atrocity: Memorial Museums and the Politics of Past Violence. New Brunswick, NJ; Camden, NJ; Newark, NJ; London: Rutgers University Press.
30.
UlphJ (2015) Dealing with UK museum collections: Law, ethics and the Public/Private divide. International Journal of Cultural Property22(2–3): 177–204.
31.
WertschJV (2002) Voices of Collective Remembering. New York: Cambridge University Press.
32.
WilliamsP (2008) Memorial Museums: The Global Rush to Commemorate Atrocities. Oxford: Berg.
