The Spaces of Myth: Rethinking the history museum through mythology at the Old Staatsmuseum

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.