On Museums, Conflict, and Forgetting: An Immutable Cultural Heritage?

Forgetfulness is not a trait generally associated with museums. In principle, they endeavour to cultivate a direct link with the past by safeguarding the surviving material fragments of our cultural inheritance. However, for every object or narrative that museums preserve, there are many more that they cannot retain. This paper explores the symbiotic relationship of remembering and forgetting within contemporary museological practice. Drawing on the fall of Edward Colston’s statue in Bristol and its subsequent afterlife as a museum object, it considers the pressures on all institutions to forget in a time of marked cultural upheaval. This process is particularly significant for museums concerned with human conflict, a subject whose legacy is often highly contentious. This study draws on the example of the Royal Armouries, the UK’s national museum of arms and armour, to explore the dynamics of forgetting in an institution whose work is inextricably bound up with conflict. It assesses the diverse reasons for forgetting at this institution, including the enduring influence of historical assumptions, the strength of public opinion, legal obligations, and the promotion of inclusivity. These processes are shown to highlight the plurality of forgetting in museums, which requires institutions to adopt a flexible approach to its challenges. Ultimately, this paper addresses a perpetual dilemma faced by museums, but one that has become especially pressing in the current climate of heightened cultural sensitivity: what is acceptable for a museum to forget?