This study explores how the Placeness affects Cultural Memory representation due to the analysis of the Placeness and cultural memory representation of the National Museum of Korean Contemporary History and the Seodaemun Prison History Hall. The study...
This study explores how the Placeness affects Cultural Memory representation due to the analysis of the Placeness and cultural memory representation of the National Museum of Korean Contemporary History and the Seodaemun Prison History Hall. The study theoretically discussed the formative structure of placeness and the features of cultural memory theory. Furthermore, it suggested the formative structure of placeness in the research site and researched the aspects of cultural memory representation through the analysis of exhibition narratives.
The results of the study were discussed as follows. First of all, the National Museum of Korean Contemporary History recalled the cultural memories such as ‘the grateful memory of United States’ and ‘proud memory of Republic of Korea’ based on its placeness as ‘the building representing 60 years of memories of the growth and success of modern Korean history.’ Additionally, the placeness of the Seodaemun Prison History Hall and its image of the so-called ‘holy place of independence movement’ represented the cultural reminiscence of ‘the memory of the national hero’ and ‘the cruel memory under Japanese imperialism’.
However, the cultural memories recalled from the placeness were incomplete due to having an intentional selection of placeness. Accordingly, to activate the cultural memory representation, the examples of ‘House of History of the Federal Republic of Germany’ and ‘Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum’ suggested expansion of the placeness. Ultimately, the study, according to the analysis of the placeness of museums related to Modern and Contemporary Korean History, found that the placeness of museums applied legitimacy to the cultural memory reproduction.
It would be difficult to generalize the contents discussed in the study into all museums, since our object of study was limited to specific museum cases. However, the correlation between the structural formation of placeness and cultural memory representation presented in this paper is meaningful in that it suggested a new perspective on the memory representation of museum. Such an attempt would seek significance in that it would provide a new direction for the study on the memory representation of museums in the future.