Paper Short Abstract:

This paper examines disputes over patrimonial and historical narratives in contemporary Chile. To achieve this, it critically and digitally analyses over sixty versions of curatorial statements and audience comments related to the two most controversial exhibitions at the National Historical Museum in recent years.

Paper Abstract:

Between 2019 and 2023, Chile experienced a volatile political context. It navigated a social revolt, human rights violations at the hands of the police, two failed constitutional drafts, a health pandemic, and more than a dozen elections. During these years, the Museo Histórico Nacional (National History Museum of Chile) was tasked with curating two exhibits on the history of democracy. The first focused on constitutional history in the midst of the elections for the first Constituent Assembly and riots. The second commemorated the 50th anniversary of the 1973 coup d'état when studies indicated the most extraordinary collapse of democratic credibility in the last three decades. Each curatorial process involved negotiations with the governments in power —first from the right, then from the left— heritage agents and communities.

This presentation traces these negotiations through commentaries on the more than 60 versions of its curatorial statement, characterising the objects, materialities, and words most contested by each political sector and their historical narratives, materialities and words most contested by each political sector and their historical narratives.