How to Exhibit Arms

Eighty years have passed since the end of the Second World War, but how we exhibit and contextualize the weapons and technologies that were developed in the two world wars is as relevant as ever. Join Dr Stephan Jaeger as he explores the varied ways in which European and North American war and military history museums have taken on this task.

Gas warfare, the atomic bomb, aerial bombs, tanks, and long-range rockets, among others, are all used to illustrate military success and innovation but also humanity’s capacity for dehumanization and destruction. How, for example, should we look at the V2-rocket of Nazi Germany? Is it an artefact of mass destruction? Of genocide? Is it a major development in rocket science, or evidence of how Nazi engineers made careers in the US after the Second World War. Perhaps we should view it as a centrepiece of sublime architecture.

Come along to learn about the multiple entanglements of weapon technologies such as that of the V2-rocket and the complex possibilities of curating weapons as objects of admiration, as well as how museums steer visitors towards particular interpretations, or encourage them to approach weapons critically and from multiple perspectives.

Dr Stephan Jaeger is Professor of German Studies and Head of the Department of German and Slavic Studies at the University of Manitoba (Winnipeg, Canada). His research centres on narratives, representations, and memory of war, genocide, and violence in German and European museums, literature, film, and historiography.

Image: Two Stages of US Precision Bombing on Italy. Copyright: Royal Armouries Museum, Image Library