Construcción de identidades en los museos de Cataluña y País Vasco: entre lo local, nacional y global

Abstract

As is well-known cultural heritage acts as a support for the expression and construction of identities. Thus museums play a decisive role in the recomposition of local, national and regional identities via the appropriation and recognition of heritage. But such appropriation is not neutral. Through museographic discourse, through their exhibitions and their content museums act as activeagents in the recomposition of identities taking up certain heritage elements and not others or valuing one part of the past and not another. In a globalized word and in changing societies in which identities are constructed in different ways and play different roles it is necessary to reflect on the role played by museums today. Through a comparative study of the museums in Catalonia and the BasqueCountry from the 1970s onwards we analyze the public and political debates which the contents and objectives of some of these museums have caused.

Keywords

• Museums
• Identity
• Cultural Heritage
• Globalisation
• Location