Abstract:
History museums in the 21st century are facing an identity crisis and nearing
irrelevance. Their devolution has made history separate from the present,
controlled and binary, often resulting in a mono-epistemic narrative of history
where the West has prevailed and has thus limited its function as a custodian
of history. Museums have slowly decentralised into containers of collections
and passive observance, cut off from the public realm. In post-industrial
cities, such as Pretoria, a lack of good museum public space scarcely allows
for discussion and exposure to ideas. Ocularcentrism has produced an
architecture of detachment and isolation. Museum architecture’s role is often
reduced to a subservient one concerned with pleasing the eye and lacked
engagement of all the bodily senses. The intention is to reconcile the modern
history museum’s limitations with the contingency of history and time. This
proposal considers a mythic interpretation of history. Such an approach
presents a heterogeneous and inclusive perspective and moves beyond the
object into an intangible, ambiguous, and sublime nature of history and
heritage.
