No museum can tell the whole story

The continuing debate over the Canadian Museum for Human Rights’ Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present exhibit has focused significantly on what the exhibit leaves out.

Some critics argue that the exhibit should have explained the United Nations Partition Plan, the Arab rejection of that plan, the 1948 invasion by neighbouring Arab states, the displacement of Jews from Arab countries, Hamas, October 7, the hostages and the reasons for Israeli security measures.

Others argue with equal conviction that it should also have addressed the Deir Yassin massacre, the expansion of Israeli settlements, decades of occupation, the Right of Return, changing demographic realities and the experiences of Palestinian refugees throughout the Middle East.

All of those subjects matter. Many remain the subject of legitimate scholarly debate. But the controversy points to a broader question that extends well beyond this particular exhibit.

Can any museum exhibition tell the whole story?

One of the first lessons I learned while helping develop the Canadian Museum for Human Rights was that museum work is as much about deciding what to leave out as what to include.

Visitors often imagine that museums simply assemble facts and artifacts. In reality, every exhibition is an act of interpretation. There is never enough space, never enough time, and never enough words to tell everything. Every object displayed means another cannot be. Every story included means another must wait. Every exhibition begins with a central question, and that question shapes every curatorial decision that follows.

That is not a flaw in museums. It is their nature. A history museum, a war museum and a human rights museum may all examine the same event, but they are not asking the same questions. A history museum seeks to explain what happened, when it happened, why it happened and who the principal actors were. A war museum explores military campaigns, strategy, politics and conflict. A human rights museum begins somewhere else. It asks how people experienced events, what human rights were at stake, and what visitors might learn about dignity, discrimination, justice and responsibility.

The Uprooted exhibit explores the experience of displacement as understood and expressed by participating Palestinian Canadians. It is not intended to resolve competing historical interpretations of the broader Arab-Israeli conflict.

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights was never intended to be a museum of world or military history. Its legislated mandate is to explore human rights, using stories from many places and times to encourage understanding, reflection and dialogue. That distinction matters.

Consider the museum’s Holocaust gallery. It does not attempt to tell the complete political history of 20th-century Europe. Visitors do not learn every detail of the Treaty of Versailles, the Weimar Republic, the Second World War, Allied military strategy or post-war reconstruction. It does not dwell on the new State of Israel or mention Palestinians who were there for centuries before 1948. Those are all important subjects, but they are not the central purpose of the exhibition.

Instead, the large Holocaust gallery and significant programming focus on the human consequences of persecution, the destruction of democratic institutions, the progression from discrimination to genocide, and the choices made by individuals and societies. No one concludes that the museum is denying the importance of the subjects it does not explore. We understand that every exhibition must define its scope. The same principle applies throughout the museum.

A small exhibition about Nellie McClung cannot become the complete history of women’s rights. She made extraordinary contributions to Canadian society but also held views that many Canadians now reject. Museums do not ignore such complexities, but neither can every exhibition explore every dimension of every life. Curators must decide which questions an exhibition is intended to answer.

None of this means that historical context is unimportant. On the contrary, context is essential. Books, documentaries, classrooms, lectures, university courses and history museums all contribute to a richer understanding of complex events. A museum exhibition is one way of learning, but not the only way.

Visitors naturally bring their own histories, identities and experiences with them. They want to see those experiences recognized and they notice what is absent. That is entirely understandable.

Perhaps the more useful question is not whether an exhibition includes every important historical fact. It is whether it honestly fulfills the purpose it set out to achieve. Museum exhibitions are invitations to think more deeply, to ask further questions and, ideally, to continue learning long after we leave the gallery.

No museum can tell the whole story. Nor should we expect it to. But if it stimulates dialogue, curiosity and further learning, perhaps that is the truest measure of its success.

Judith Dueck was the first director of research, content and scholarship at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. She writes in a personal capacity.