"The Matter of Memory" Exhibition
Improve listing
Presented by
Portsmouth Historical Society NH
"The Matter of Memory"
April 1- November 3, 2024
The role of museums as both guardians and creators of individual and community memory.
Exhibition open seven days a week 10:00am–5:00pm
Museums, by their very nature as repositories and preservers of collections of objects, are vessels of individual and community memory. These same museums, consciously and unconsciously, are active participants in shaping our understanding of history.
What histories do we choose to examine and to share, both as a museum and as a community? Whose stories do we establish, legitimize, and perpetuate through the things we save and display? Can our collective memories bind us together or can our interpretation of history be manipulated to distort the past and keep us apart?
This exhibition encourages visitors to look at how the items we preserve are tools for shaping how we remember the past.