'The nation's temple' : national museums and national identity, a comparative case study

One of the institutions fundamental to European nation-states, national museums play host to various socio-political constructs including that of national identity. The public art museum is part of the complex institutional dynamic linking the political state and the nation; and as a public institution accessible - at least in theory - to all areas of society, it can play a homogenising and binding role within the state. This is a quality partly created, and often drawn upon by dominant discourses in an effort to encourage identification with a prescribed set of values inherent in the display... Mehr ...