"We Will Remember Them" Memory and Commemoration in War Museums

Abstract

David Lowenthal has observed that in today's museums, "nothing seems too horrendous to commemorate" (Lowenthal 1985). Yet museums frequently portray a sanitised version of warfare. The twentieth century saw the development of commemorative traditions: customs and narratives by which individuals, groups and nations remember, commemorate and attempt to resolve memories of the traumatic experience that is war. These conventions often also govern museum interpretation of war. This dissertation examines the representation of war in two very different museums: Britain's national Imperial War Museum, and the regional In Flanders Fields Museum at Ypres, Belgium. The Imperial War Museum tends to follow established commemorative traditions. In its recently-opened Holocaust exhibition, however, it has made use of a different style of commemoration. In Flanders Fields has consciously attempted to avoid traditional forms of commemoration, which could be seen as glamorising or sanitising war. This museum focuses on the experiences of individual soldiers of all nations, and tells visitors that they must learn from the First World War to work for peace. "They shall not grow old, As we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, Nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun And in the morning We will remember them." – Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)