KÄTE HAMBURGER LECTURE WITH MIZUHO IKEDA
WHEN
WHERE
Innovation Center A2 1, Seminar room 0.01
Saarland University
LANGUAG
ENGLISH
PROGRAMME
The Käte Hamburger Centre for Cultural Practices of Reparation (CURE) and the CEUS | Cluster for European Studies warmly invite you to attend the next Käte Hamburger Lecture at Saarland University. This series allows fellows from the centre to share their latest research perspectives on cultural practices of reparation. After the lectures, audience members will have the opportunity to engage with key topics in more detail during a public discussion session.
Mizuho Ikeda: Can Exhibitions Repair? Rethinking Cultural Representation in Museums
This lecture explores whether museum exhibitions can be understood not only as sites of knowledge production but also as practices of reparation. Rather than asking whether exhibitions resolve historical injustices, it considers what kinds of relationships they can repair, and where the limits of representation lie. Drawing on two case studies, I first examine the British Museum’s Burma to Myanmar exhibition (Nov. 2023-Feb. 2024), reflecting on the challenges of representing Myanmar’s ethnic diversity alongside research conducted with members of the Myanmar diaspora and artists beyond the gallery. I then turn to the Louvre Abu Dhabi to explore how the representation of religious heritage seeks to foster intercultural understanding while addressing historical and cultural asymmetries. While exhibitions cannot by themselves resolve historical injustices, they may nevertheless create conditions for forms of cultural reparation by reshaping how histories, identities, and differences are represented. The lecture concludes by reflecting on both the possibilities and the limits of museums as reparative spaces.
The Käte Hamburger Lectures provide deeper insight into the centre’s ongoing research, convey these ideas to the wider university community, and invite the public to engage in meaningful discussions on cultural practices of reparation.
Live Lecture Broadcast
The lecture will be broadcast live via Microsoft Teams on November 18 starting at 6:00 p.m. with the lecture starting no later than 6:15 p.m. You can find the link for online participation here.