Wandering Between Times: Experiences of the liminal nature of the historical museum

Abstract

Historical museums serve to hold on to the past when living memories of the past are fading. In museum exhibitions we find representations of the past in a presentist environment. In this thesis I posit that the mixing of past and present influences in a museum has led to historical museums becoming liminal spaces, that is to say spaces that occupy a temporal location that is neither in the past nor in the present. This thesis will further dive into the liminality of the museum and will make the argument that museums use different strategies to use liminality to make the past comprehensible for visitors and that museums allow for historical sensation through this liminal position. This will be done at the hand of interviews with several conservators and exhibition designers.