Producing “Cultural Heritage” and Framing “Expertise”: Berlin’s Pergamon Museum

Abstract

Taking Berlin’s Pergamon Museum as a case study, the article explores how the museum has appropriated cultural heritage from the (so-called) Ancient Near East and produced what has become known as the Pergamon Altar or Ishtar Gate, for example. Apart from the acquisition, the article addresses the reproduction of the ancient monuments in Berlin in the early twentieth century, and the museum’s historical as well as current curatorial approaches to present the reproduced monuments. By exploring the strategies that museum professionals have developed to transform ancient remains from the Near East into iconic museum exhibits on display in Berlin’s Museum of the Ancient Near East (Vorderasiatisches Museum) in the Pergamon Museum, the article discusses how the various ways, the fragments-turned-exhibits have crossed borders, have contributed to the production of cultural heritage. By examining the practices of presenting objects and setting up displays through a multimodal analysis of the architectural reproductions, modern reconstructions, wall paintings, decorations, wall panels, labels, photographic images and printed information, the article explores how museum professionals have framed the museum’s role in the production of “cultural heritage” and addressed these transformational practices of appropriation and re-interpretation.