Museums, Human Rights, and Universalism Reconsidered

Abstract Human rights in the museum context draw on the 1789 French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and on the more recent (1948) United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Central to these declarations is a notion of the universal, which is potentially in tension with critiques of universalism in the museum sector. The chapter examines how human rights are situated in the history of the public museum, particularly in the so‐called universal museum and the Declaration of Universal Museums from 2002. It traces the emergence of museums that address atrocities, such as holocaust museums (1980s) and museums as sites of conscience (1990s), before considering the more recent museums and alliances such as the Federation of International Human Rights Museums (FIHRM) which focus on human rights and engage in activism and advocacy on both local and international scales. The chapter highlights tensions between notions of universalism and human rights discourses through vignettes of the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool and the Canadian Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg. In doing so, it addresses the crucial issue of how these tensions might contribute to change in museums in the twenty‐first century.