Museums and Military Memory

Kate Compton (York Army Museum): Museums and Military Memory

The second in a mini series of lectures exploring the practice of commemoration.

Museums have always been preoccupied with the preservation and representation of particular cultural moments.  This is intensely true of regimental museums.  These institutions are repositories of all the narrative threads which combine to form a regiment's identity, often over a period of several hundreds of years.  This lecture tells the story of how two regimental museums were brought together to form today's York Army Museum, and how the general public's increasing fascination with anniversaries - notably the ongoing centenary of the First World War - facilitated this transformation.  It examines the challenges and opportunities for museums participating in anniversary campaigns, and the peculiar military investment in remembrance.