Exhibiting Solidarity Work: Temporary Displays and Their Potential To Trouble and Push Museums Representing European Mobilities

Abstract

Temporary exhibitions are excellent points of departure for looking at the ‘troubling’ effects that refugee realities, migration, and mobility practices have on European museums. Based on an analysis of the narrative strategies of four travelling exhibitions Lichtblick, Yallah?!, Flight for life, and The Museum without a home, the focus of this contribution is on representations of migration and solidarity work since the 2015 ‘summer of migration’. The article analyses the displays themselves and the venues, the places, and the spaces that are represented through them, and the ways in which the exhibitions relate to solidarity work. It is the aim of this article to sound these exhibitions’ potential to trouble and also to inspire museums in their work towards representing flight and mobility, as well as refugees and solidarity workers and the manifold ways in which they are part of today’s European realities.

Keywords

• solidarity work
• european museums
• temporary exhibition
• migration
• voice