Great Narratives of the Past. Traditions and Revisions in National Museums Conference proceedings from EuNaMus, European National Museums: Identity Politics, the Uses of the Past and the European Citizen, Paris 29 June – 1 July & 25-26 November 2011. Dominique Poulot, Felicity Bodenstein & José María Lanzarote Guiral (eds) EuNaMus Report No 4. Published by Linköping University Electronic Press: http://www.ep.liu.se/ecp_home/index.en.aspx?issue=078 © The Author. 1 Preface Uses of the Past – Historical Narratives and the Museum Dominique Poulot Text translated from French by Felicity Bodenstein For the historian, the museum represents both a resource and a place where his work may be presented. As a visitor, the historian is also an expert of the institution’s performance, capable of judging it in relation to his own field of knowledge, related to the nature of the collections and the museographical project that guides their display. The museum can also be a place that inspires, reactivates, or even induces historical work, suggesting new topics or points of view. The writings of historians bear witness to the stimulating effect of the museum, such as Jules Michelet’s by now classic account of his visit to the Musée des monuments français created by Alexandre Lenoir (but also to the galleries of the natural history museum), or Arnold Toynbee’s reaction to the display of civilisations in the British Museum. The visit to the museum is an essential experience in the birth and development of historical imagination. The historian may be a specialist of all or part of a museum’s collection, whether on display or stored in its reserves. He establishes a direct relationship with the objects, contributing to their understanding. In this case, the historian is part of the museum’s team, and must adapt his work to the needs of its management, in particular in terms of communication and public policy, whilst adhering and imposing the ethical standards of his own profession, its erudite specificity and methods of scientific interpretation. The historian becomes part of the sphere of “public history” and dedicates a more or less important part of his activity to guaranteeing a balance in the mediation of his research for the interests of scholarly communication with the development of civic values and the public success of the establishment that he works for or with. However, in relation to the museum the historian more often than not plays the part of the independent scholar who, if needs be, may express his opinion of the institution in critical terms, appreciating and questioning the interpretations that nourish the exhibitions that it dedicates to events, personalities, objects, sometimes dealing with memorial, political, cultural or social issues. In this case, the historian sees the museum as he might see any other media, such as cinema, television productions, historical novels, school manuals, etc., that popularise what he considers to be his field of expertise. Lastly for the historian of historiography or memory studies, the museum has itself become an object of inquiry as it provides particular insight into the constitution of collective memory, the state of historical knowledge in the past, providing a more or less clear panorama of the practices and issues at stake in the way the past was used to serve the present at different points in the museum’s history. The diversity of relationships that exist between the historian and the museum needs to be considered in the context of the different kinds of historical genres and the variety of specialised domains that they engender. An historian of art, or more generally of forms and objects, who