Peace museology through commemoration: curating interruption

The present article argues that museum environments serve as epistemic architectures through which different forms of peace are rendered thinkable. Building on the ‘turn to peace’ within New Museology, it also introduces the concept of dissonant reflection or a processual form of reflection – characterised by unresolved interpretative tension and fostered through spatial and informational aides within museum spaces (using Gandhi Smriti as a focal point, here). Additionally, the article then embraces a comparative reading of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe to identify other curatorial logics that support different imaginations of peace – opening a discursive space for curatorial epistemology that is capable of representing not just what peace has been but also what peace could be.