Sunday, October 1 – 10am – Galerie Rabus

Ulrike Bergermann
An empty fortress
The "Museum of Europe" in Brussels

Though intended to open in Brussels next spring, the Museum of Europe is still surrounded by mystery. A press release in 2005 said that its exhibition would be about the unification of Europe and would start around the year 1000, as by then migration had mostly ended and Roman Catholicism had "unified" what was to become Europe.
Giving a history to something that is evolving and transforming involves nothing less than the invention of Europe. We shall see a Europe in future perfect: a Europe that always will have been. While historiography and cultural studies are busy working on models that question old topographies of centres and peripheries, establishing a centre for the display of "Europe" is a challenge, to say the least.
Commenting on migration and ethnicity, its ambassadors, historians Krzysztof Pomian and Marie Louise van Plessen, said: "Nous ne voulons pas limiter l'Europe à sa face noir" (Pomian); temporary exhibitions are to be curated by members of the respective groups (Plessen). Black faces, we might add, expatriates, refugees, people with more than one ethnic background, with several or no "homes": they are supposed to speak as particular cases, not as a part of the "whole". Located near the sites of power (the European Parliament), the Musée de l'Europe is an empty centre.