The museum and the mass grave: How colonial powers curate our pain

The Museum and the Mass Grave: Colonial Powers and Curated Pain

When a museum displays ancestral relics behind glass, the glass is not neutral, but a barrier erected by power, dividing the living from the dead, the colonizer from the colonized.

The museum, often described as a sanctuary of culture, can be seen as a mausoleum of dispossession for nations that have suffered genocide or colonization.

Colonial powers have long used museums to collect, display and contain the suffering of subjugated peoples, transforming trauma into spectacle and erasure into curation.

Armenia, like many small nations whose history was stolen, remains entangled in this architecture of memory, where museums produce history rather than simply preserving it.

Author's Summary

Museums can perpetuate colonial power dynamics by curating the pain of subjugated peoples.

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The Armenian Weekly The Armenian Weekly — 2025-10-29

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