TRAUM – Transforming Author Museums

Research Council of Norway project number 251225, 2016–2019.
Project managers: Ulrike Spring (during the project Professor/Professor II at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences) and Johan Schimanski (Professor, University of Oslo).

The main aim of the project is to examine current practices of author museums from contemporary and historical perspectives, with the aim of developing new interpretations of author museums as spaces of knowledge transfer and cultural production. The project aims to investigate how and why (certain) writers and literature have been turned into cultural heritage, helped by the display of auratic places such as their homes in combination with the aestheticization of personal ‘relics’ within specific cultural-political contexts. Combining humanities, social sciences and artistic perspectives, it will critically reflect on existing and historical exhibition strategies and consider alternative and innovative ways of displaying literature, focusing on the potentials of author museums and other literary museums and centres as sites of cultural production and literary creativity. On a meta-level the project will contribute to a better understanding of how to communicate the relevance of humanities to the public.