In this post I want to focus on the value of the experience, and the importance of the audience. What follows is part of an assignment for my Identity in Popular Culture class that I’m taking while studying at the University of Amsterdam. It will primarily be informed by the writing of Henrietta Lidchi from her chapter titled "The Poetics and the Politics of Exhibiting Other Cultures" in the book Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (2012), which is edited by British theorist Stuart Hall. All quotes that follow are taken from this chapter of this book.
Let’s start by defining museums as a place to “acquire, safeguard, conserve, and display objects, artifacts and works of arts of various kinds” (Hall 2012: 155). Museums are a place of learning and discovering more about the politics of that specific place: they aim to have the viewer leave with newfound knowledge from a perspective predetermined by the museum staff. In the case of the Anne Frank Museum, it seems like one of its goals -- as informed by my personal experience there -- is to introduce visitors to the idea of space. What would it have been like to be in a cramped, dark, and smelly house for a couple of years without ever being able to leave? It’s as much about the facts of Anne's life as it is about experiencing the physical space. But why? Why isn’t there more information about the Holocaust in general and the lives of other Jews and minorities persecuted during World War II?
In order to answer this question, I think we have to look to politics surrounding the audience. Specifically, what kind of visitors is the museum hoping to attract, and how does this shape the exhibition itself? It becomes the job of the museum to set up the show in such a way that it can appeal to the widest audience possible, and Lidchi points towards two ways of deconstructing the implications of museums while thinking about its audience: “first, that museums as educational institutions can serve to deepen knowledge but they are usually not directly confrontational: their representations must be held to be appropriate and to concord broadly with the view of social reality the visitor holds” (Hall 202). Except not. Hall continues that “the public attending museums expect their representations of the world to be confirmed, if a little extended, by the museum” (Hall 202). Keeping this in mind, the set-up of the Anne Frank House makes perfect sense: Anne Frank has become the quintessential icon of the Holocaust. It’s almost as if her experience symbolically becomes representative of all experiences of Jews in hiding during the Holocaust. Clearly this isn't the case, but the museum provides very few references of the lives of all the six plus million other people lost during the Holocaust.
(Side note: going to an “official” Holocaust museum -- like the one in Washington D.C. for example -- gives you a very different experience of life during the Holocaust. That museum doesn’t focus on one specific experience, but rather the experience of many. It broadens its information to include stories of those who died and those who survived, and often displays objects and any kind of memorabilia collected. Furthermore, at the museum in D. C., visitors can take a card with the name of a person on it and follow the experience of that person throughout the entire museum to see what their life was like and if they managed to survive. It isn’t just about one person, but rather the lives of the collective. This isn’t to say that it’s a better or worse way of explaining an atrocity, but rather that it’s a very different perspective and way of presenting knowledge.)
Lidchi continues with a second reason for anticipating the reaction of the audience: “second, as museums seek to widen their natural constituency to reach more varied audiences, so the visiting public will become increasingly more diverse and may have more varied, or even competing demands” (Hall 202). The museum sees upwards of one million visitors a year and has to find a way to accommodate these demands. One way the Anne Frank House deals with this is by predetermining the way in which you experience the space. When you arrive you get a pamphlet that has the only descriptive text for the entire museum. While there are short videos throughout, as well as quotes of Anne’s on the wall, there is no other text descriptions. Finally, all visitors have to experience the house in the same way though a one-way predetermined path. It isn’t really possible to go backwards and see another room again or to see the rooms “out of order.” It is thus a very conscious decision made by the museum staff to prioritize an organized experience over a more personal experience.
A predetermined experience gives the visitors the impression that there’s a certain agenda being pushed. It’s about becoming one of millions of people to have this particular experience. I almost wanted there to be more text along the way. It felt rather empty not having anything to guide my understanding of the space. Keeping in mind that it is impossible to create an identical representation of exactly what it would’ve been like for Anne Frank to live in hiding in the early 1940s, why not make it as informative as possible? It’s nice to see the originals posters of movie stars that she had on her wall, but where’s the description of the other materials in her room? Finally, why was it decided to keep the rooms empty instead of recreating the furniture and objects that would’ve been typically kept in those spaces when she lived there?
As I went through her house a second time, I didn’t feel the same kind of guilt that I felt the first time. It seemed like the more I experienced the commercialism of her house, the more I become systematically desensitized to the trauma and pain of her suffering. Wait, what? Yeah, it felt like just another museum with more objects on display for me to view, analyze, and critique. It’s something I’m still trying to process and understand.
I often wonder what Anne Frank herself would think about her home being turned into a museum. On the one hand I’d like to think that she would be proud that her story has created visibility for the inhumane conditions of the Holocaust, but on the other hand I think she’d feel some sense of betrayal and exploitation. Why couldn’t this kind of support be found during the war, instead of afterwards? Furthermore, if it wasn’t for her father’s decision to read her diary, the museum wouldn’t exist in the first place. What if your experiences or my experiences of life were turned into a museum in a matter of years? How should our daily experiences be shaped by expectations of what might happen in the future?
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