Description
painted or sculpted portraits, medals, coins and banknotes, sepulchres, reliquaries, inscriptions, souvenirs and memorabilia, photographs and archives, and diaries. Beyond its collection, the Museum itself has necessarily become a place of memory, from its architecture to the naming of its parts.This catalogue addresses fundamental questions concerning the linkage between the creation of objects and the creation of memory as an aspect of human culture in general. Ultimately, memory is tied up with the complex question of identity, personal identity and social or cultural identity. As the surrealist film-maker Luis Bunuel wrote: ‘You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realise that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all.’