Curating Europe’s Memory: A Conversation with Simina Bădică about the House of European History

In this episode of Open Space(s) series, the Reviewof Democracy brings to your attention one of Europe’s most ambitious cultural institutions: the House of European History. Founded by the European Parliament in 2017 in Brussels, this unique institution explores Europe’s past from a transnational perspective and provides a platform for debating shared memory. The House of European Historycurates exhibitions, fosters debates, and research the shared European histories.

Our guest is Simina Bădică, who is a curator at the House of European History in Brussels. Prior to her work at the House of the European History, she was a researcher, curator and the Head of Ethnological Archives at the Romanian Peasant Museum in Bucharest. She defended her PhD at the Central European University with a dissertation on the practices of curating Communism.

Throughout our conversation, we explore the precise meaning of the term ‘house of history’ and how this institution seeks to put this notion into practice. Forthe House of European History, the notion of open space has a crucial importance. On one hand, the building located in Brussels, initially designed in the 1920s as a dental hospital, invites visitors to engage more deeply with European narratives. At the same time, its strong digital exhibitionsencourages visitors and practitioners to interact with the content in creative ways. While rooted in the museum’s physical space, the digital exhibitions speak to a broader, virtual European public.

Exhibiting for such a broad audience inevitably raises complex curatorial questions. Thus, we discuss the challenges of curating information in 24 languages, the role of digital tools, and the multiple ways in which House of European History aims to connect with the local andinternational public. Nowhere is this curatorial balance more visible than in its exhibitions, both permanent and temporary.In our dialogue, we focus on two extremely relevant cases: Facts for Real: A History of Forgery and Falsification, a touringexhibition that presents falsifications throughout European history; and Presence of the Past: A European Album, a visually rich exhibition that rethinks how Europeans interpret their entangled histories through documentary photos. 

Can a museum be both local and European? How cancurators respond to an increasingly political and social polarization without reducing complexity? What are the curatorial approaches that encourage the participants to ask nuanced questions about history? This conversation offers areflection of these question, based on the expertise of those working at the intersection of public history and museology.

Public historians, museum practitioners, as well as scholars will definitely find this Open Space(s) episode extremely relevant.