International Day of Museums 2012

International Day of Museums, 2012

May 18, 19 and 20, 2012

Activities at the Museu Memorial de l'Exili (La Jonquera) for the International Day of Museums, 2012:

1. Open Doors May 18, 19 and 20, 2012
Schedule: May 18 - 19, from 10h to 18h; May 20, from 10h to 14h. 

Sunday, May 20, at 11h. 

These donations are a results of our priority -from the beginning in planning the permanent exhibition- to offer a place of preference to the visitor and, mainly, to the testimony or donor of the legacy of tist exile caused by the end of the Civil War. This way, according to this line, receiving these assorted objects of enormous personal significance, a variety of documents, original publications of the time.... has fed the archives of the MUME during these four years of existence. In this sense, the main objective is that the visitor may also be actor in the museum and can explain their personal story or that inherited story for family reasons, friendships, or the wish to collect and know. 

This way,the objects, tools, flags created in the concentration camps, the tickets for ships, passes, condecorations from WWII, an exceptional suitcase that contains money not payed to a company of the Popular Army at the last moment of the conflict in Catalonia, a music sheet of a "sardana" written in exile in honor of Lluís Companys, amongst other things, help to offer a view of micro-history of the exile experience.  In effect, the collection of this inherited has an enormous importance to get a closer look, that incorporates and personalises the short stories beyond the statistics of desplacements, which often have a way of deshumanising and distancing. 

The exhibition of these objects and materials of the MUME collection, which will alternate depending on the donations that we receive, redimensions the relevance of the person in the middle of massive  movements of population. It is precisely, thanks to a close look at the biographies of normal people that allows the exhibition of new pieces in the collection, that we can put a face, name and surname, to an exile, to a deportation. This is the case, for example, of one of the donors, Lluïsa Miralles, exile and wife of Miquel Serra, deported to Mathausen, one of the founders of Amical de Mauthausen and an important witness for the book by Montserrat Roig about the Catalans deported to the Nazi camps. In effect, the objects and documents of Miquel Serra and Lluïsa Miralles exhibited allow to follow a short but meaningful, biography of a person who suffered and survived in the abominable universe of deportation. 

The exhibition of some of the pieces given to the MUME by a wide variety of persons tied to the memory of the exile helps us increase the pedagogic potencil of the permanent exhibition. A pedagogic potencial that increases with the emotional connection that appears when the visitor can enjoy the authentic dialogue of the inherited testimonial material. In this way, the museography allows more space for the actors of thousands of little stories of the exile. In summary, these objects, often handmade and with a strong sentimental feeling, re-read in the present in a Museum, offer elements of reflexion, interpretation and comprehension of the exile experience.