Managing Jewish Museums in a Multi-faith Society: Notes From Italy.

The growth of Jewish museums in recent years should be seen within a wider context of interest in the histories of indigenous, minority and disadvantaged groups. This has led to demands for increasing multivocality within museum and exhibition displays, allowing members of indigenous, minority and disadvantaged groups to speak for themselves.This study focuses on Jewish museums in Italy. In Venice, Florence and Ferrara, the local Jewish communities set up museums, but lacked the financial resources to run them on a day-to-day basis. Hence the need to subcontract operational management to an outside organisation. The paper explores the implications of this split between ownership and control, and examines the ways in which the local Jewish community seeks to maintain control over performative narrative and interpretative practices. The argument focuses on the inter-relationship between performative and spatial narrative in the museum context and the importance of social meanings attached to space.

Managing Jewish Museums in a Multi-faith Society: Notes From Italy. Journal Articles