Abstract:

The thesis examines how cultural representations in museums represent the identity of historically oppressed groups, such as American Indians, African Americans, and Asian Americans. Museums are a space for the creation and collection of "memory." Museums represent the collective past of a group by displaying various artworks, objects and documents. In displaying non-Eurocentric cultures, museums sometimes become a ritual space where the identity of the particular culture is redefined by the art created by the people or objects used in that cultural community. As more and more museums focus on the display of cultures and the revision of culture, the identities of various ethnic groups reach a different stage in which the story is no longer told from a single Euro-American point of view. The discussion will begin with a few examples of cultural displays beyond the West in the existing museums and exhibitions in order to analyze how memory is re/produced through representation of images and objects, how such representation of memory further retells the history of a culture, and finally assists the people to establish a new identity in a multicultural society.