Traumatic Contemporaneity : Reflections on Piotr Piotrowski's Critical Museography

This essay analyses two texts by Polish art historian Piotr Piotrowski (1952-2015) that articulate theoretical stances towards art museography, the one devoted to issues of trauma management, contemporaneity and identity, and the other presenting a methodological tactic to deflect the power of the art-historical museum piece in critical and democratic ways. Reflecting on how they deal with psychological as well as openly political issues, I interpret and assess their joint contribution to the broader interdisciplinary field of (critical) museography. The texts are “New Museums in New Europe” and “Making the National Museum Critical”. The first text discusses four new or newly re-furbished museums in a culture in Eastern Europe since 1989 characterized as “post-traumatic”. These museums are contextualized both in relation to the Western museum boom of the same years, and to the new museums’ recent history, where sometimes the very architecture and site of these institutions renders trauma tangible. The second text is a case-study based on experience and inside knowledge, from the short period when the author directed and together with Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius oversaw the Warsaw National Museum of Art (2009-2010). Together they developed Piotrowski’s concept of “the critical museum” as a way of dealing with the challenges of running an old national art museum based on masterpieces while also striving to engage with pressing contemporary issues. I contend that the latter concept, in particular, is promising, given that it is possible to maintain a difference within the museum institution as a prerequisite for critical intervention.