With: museum advisor of the Archaeological Museum Zagreb Jacqueline Balen, research journalists of Jutarnji list Slavica Lukić and Kristina Turčin, deputy editor-in-chief of Novosti, historian and writer Tihomir Ponoš

Hosted by: MSU curator Leila Topić

The direct impulse for the discussion Ethics of the Display was the dilemma that plagued the curatorial team of the exhibition His Supporting Hand – Curating the Curator: Davor Matičević (Leila Topić, Željko Luketić, Leri Ahel) about how to present documentary content we wanted both to show and to hide. More accurately, the newspaper documents from different local weeklies from the 1990s which, sometimes in quite an obnoxious and inappropriate way, presented the private life, the course of illness and death of Davor Matičević.

Since the late 1980s, in developed democracies the AIDS crisis served as a catalyst for new alliances, highlighting sexual freedom and equality, fight against intolerance and violence, or the expansion of the social horizon, with the notion of queer to evoke a state beyond the sexual differences division. However, our local environment, which is evident from the exhibited documentation accompanying the media reactions on Matičević’s illness and death, collapsed into an intolerance and criminalisation of AIDS through media harangues, additionally marginalising the rights of sexual minorities.

Aware of the fact that if we hid these documents we would distort or misrepresent the zeitgeist of the ‘leaden nineties’, when it was considered normal to crucify a person in the media because of, for example, an infamous disease. On the other hand, displaying these documents in a traditional museum way, for example in showcases/ glass displays  would mean additionally highlighting it and making it a visually legitimate part of exhibition materials competing for a visitor’s attention.

The compromise solution we came up with delegates responsibility and the decision on reading the controversial documentation to the visitors themselves, i.e. the amount of engagement they want or can invest in a detailed observation of the exhibition set-up.

In the wake of this dilemma, the idea about presenting ethically complex and sometimes inappropriate content for a part of the audience and by whose (non-) representation the curator forms new insights and meanings, we were interested in the opinions not only of museum professionals, but also of other professions ethically responsible for conveying or interpreting particular issues, consequently for shaping public opinion and views.

Therefore, in a discussion about the ethics of the set-up we included the museum advisor of the Archaeological Museum Zagreb, Jacqueline Balen who in 2023 (in association with the head of the museum’s Pedagogy Department, museum advisor Zorica Babić) organised Professional Events in the Archaeological Museum Zagreb for the needs of the new museum concept of the future permanent display in Zagreb’s Archaeological Museum. One of the events focused on ‘Human Remains and Museum Identity: Ethical Dilemmas and Social Conversation’, the conclusions of which will be summarised, recontextualised and shared with the discussion participants by fellow curator Balen.

Aware of the importance of the realisation that the museum point of view represents only one cultural aspect among many, we invited Jutarnji list’s research journalists Slavica Lukić and Kristina Turčin, who do not shun away from ethically demanding and complex issues, to share their experiences about the issues rarely spoken about, or stories which might be well-read, but have never been published for ethical reasons. Also, writer and historian Tihomir Ponoš will analyse different curatorial, i.e. historical approaches used for war victim stories, more accurately interpretations of the Holocaust based on his rich experience of comparing different memorial centres.

Perceiving a museum as a self-sufficient value regime exhibiting and circulating works of art, i.e. heritage, creating new meaningful bounds and bearing in mind theories as a reflexive approach to situated practices, our goals are manifold. Our wish is to answer the questions on whether we should search for ‘universal’ procedures for musealising different ethical positions? Can museums, in their recent transformations, overcome the relationship with a physical object? Which are ethically acceptable methods to adopt for gathering intangible heritage, i.e. documentation?

Curators are aware of the fact that museums “operate and communicate ethically, professionally and with the participation of communities, offering varied experiences for education, enjoyment, reflection and knowledge sharing” (ICOM’s museum definition, 2022), resulting in a need to transform a museum into a platform with diverse and conflicting voices, or a place where audience can find, confirm and contest individual views. In line with the latest trend of sharing curatorial identity, finally we ask ourselves: can audience also contest particular displays?

Leila Topić

Participants:

Jacqueline Balen - is a museum advisor, senior research associate and head of the Prehistoric Department of the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb. In addition to scientific work (younger stone and copper age), she deals with the presentation and promotion of archaeological heritage. She participates in the classes of the Department of Archeology of the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Zagreb and the University of Pula. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Danube Iron Age Route Association and president of the Croatian Archaeological Society.

Slavica Lukić (1963) is a graduate social pedagogue who graduated from the Faculty of Educational Rehabilitation in Zagreb, i.e. specialized post-graduate studies in Comparative Politics of Central and South-Eastern Europe, Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Zagreb. From 2010 to the present, she is a journalist for Jutarnji list. She is the winner of the annual journalism award of the Croatian Journalists' Association for the best interview in 2003 and the annual HND award for investigative journalism in 2009.

Tihomir Ponoš (Zagreb, 1970) – graduated in philosophy and history in Zagreb. Journalist in Vjesnik, Novi list and Novosti. Worked as a researcher in the Archive of Serbs in Croatia. From 2023, deputy editor-in-chief of the weekly Novosti. He published "On the edge of revolution – students '71", the first monograph on the student movement in the Croatian Spring. Winner of the Joško Kulušić Award of the Croatian Helsinki Committee in 2002 for spreading human rights in the media.

Kristina Turčin (1976) Graduated from the Faculty of Political Sciences. Since 1998, she has been working in Jutarnji List as a journalist and, for a short time, as an editor. It covers topics from the field of social and family policy and the rights of workers, women, children and vulnerable groups (persons with disabilities, migrants...). She is the winner of the award of the Croatian Journalists' Association for written journalism, for the year and for the year 2017 for a series of articles on the adoption of the discriminatory Family Law.