Exhibiting Work in Germany—From Industrial Labour to (Industrial) Culture.

History museums in old industrial regions are important agents in the current debate on how we perceive work in our society. One of their key issues is how work built the region and how it changed in the context of deindustrialization. The article explores the depictions of work in the Ruhr Museum, which is the central regional history museum of the foremost region of heavy industry in Germany. It shows that with few exceptions the representations of the past in this museum include only images of standardized male industrial work, mainly in the coal and steel industries. Furthermore, it demonstrates that in the sections of the museum dedicated to the present, work has disappeared almost entirely from the representations, to be replaced with representations of culture, including industrial heritage, and lifestyles. In light of these findings the article argues that this way of presenting (and not presenting) work emphasizes the break between the past and the present. It homogenizes the historical narrative of work while making current work forms invisible and downplaying the continuing importance of the world of work. Instead, the museum tells a story of loss that requires compensation by culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]