The historical memory of the National Museum: construction of identity for a nation and oral history as an innovative tool

Abstract

This paper aims to compile a series of reflections on how processes of transformation or creation of national identity are generated, consistent with the historical memory that the National Museum of Colombia works in an institutionalized and official manner. We understand the museum as a tool of social cohesion to safeguard the historical accounts of the country, so we can go developing some notes on what was found during a fieldwork in which interviews were conducted with people who work at the Museum as guards security, neighboring street vendors and passers-by, investigating what happens inside the building that fulfills the function of containing, collecting, organizing and communicating our history. All this without leaving aside that, to commemorate two hundred years of the creation of the museum, there is a reconfiguration that is in charge of restructuring the historical collection of the museum in function of remodeling, reorganizing and giving a clearer and more structured sense to the exhibition, in addition to appeal to the national dynamics of post-agreement that, circumstantially, demand historical and identity conditions in perspective to strengthen the idea of ​​a social change in the nation, where oral history will acquire great importance.