Abstract

How does a museum shape the experience of memory? Focusing on the Chilean Museum of Memory and Human Rights (MMHR), this article develops this question through the analysis of the entanglement of sensations, values, affects, and the museum forms of addressing the beholder. The paper deepens on three critical phenomena that contribute to the shaping of the experience of memory among a heterogeneous public: (1) the acknowledgment of the visitor’s presence, (2) the mediation of memory, and (3) the emergence of an anonymous voice that takes place as a collective expression of the people. It argues that the material arrangements of the MMHR become forms of detachment from the past that shape the aesthetic-political field of memory in post-Pinochet Chile. [Museum of Memory and Human Rights (MMHR), politics, aesthetics, Chile]