Abstract
What do we do with museum exhibitions which misrepresent critical information? Should the error be quietly resolved inside the institution or robustly addressed in public? Where exposing the error to public scrutiny would damage the prestige of the museum, saying nothing should we avert our eyes? Or should we instead advance a correction? Marking the civil war’s centenary at Galway City Museum, one exhibit recorded: ‘In October 1922, the Public Safety Bill established military courts that could impose death sentences for possessing arms’. A similarly focused exhibition at Cork Public Museum noted: ‘On 27th October 1922, with the IRA continuing its campaign of guerrilla warfare against the National Army, Dáil Éireann passed emergency legislation known as the Public Safety Bill’. An exhibition at the National Museum of Ireland at Dublin said: ‘ the Free State legislatively sanctioned the execution of between 77 and 81 Anti-Treaty fighters during the civil war’. The Public Safety Act (1922) is central to the telling of the civil war in a consolatory story of constitutional state formation. And yet, if we consult the Irish statute book, or for that matter any other contemporary source, we will find no trace of the Public Safety (1922). Having recognised museums have placed a fictitious Act of parliament at the centre of their telling of the civil war what do we do about this error?
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
INVENTED HISTORY, HISTORIOGRAPHY, NARRATIVES, EVIDENCE, IRISH CIVIL WAR, AFORMATIONISM
