¿El museo como forma de «conocer la Historia»? El público interpreta la inmigración

Abstract

The work analyses how the exhibition presented at Museo Nacional de la Inmigración (Immigration National Museum) was seized or interpreted by its visiting public. Dependent of the Dirección Nacional de Migraciones (National Direction of Migration), the Museum functioned between the years of 2001 and 2009 at the building of the old Hotel de Imigrantes (Immigrants Hotel, at Retiro). To this study, we used more than 700 messages registered on the Libro de Visitas do Museu (Museum Visiting Book), classified in nine categories, according to the common sense that they expressed. Along the analysis, the concept of memory becomes fundamental for us to comprehend the senses and wishes announced by the public that visited the institution. Among the themes showed in the messages, we can check an emphasis given by the visitors to the Argentine State for the construction of the Hotel, for the reception to the immigrants and, currently, for the preservation of their memory and their heritage; while it also was evidenced a thank to the immigrants, whose «strength» and «hope» contributed to the development of the country.

Keywords

• museum
• history
• memory
• immigration
• study of public