Curating Human Rights

Robin Ostow is affiliated with the Sociology Department at Wilfrid Laurier University, in Ontario, Canada. She has published extensively on national museums, Jewish museums, immigration museums and human rights museums in Europe, the Americas and Australia. Most recently, her work has focused on these museums’ displays and their relations with the communities around them.

"The literature on genocide and human rights museums is in its infancy. In its historical reconstruction of six museums located in all corners of the globe, Curating Human Rights lays a massive foundation for anyone interested in the display of atrocity and trauma in the service of universal values.They will not be able to go past Robin Ostow's argument that the path from the former to the latter is crooked and uneven. A major accomplishment."A. Dirk Moses, Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of International Relations, City College of New York, USA"Robin Ostow’s enterprising and original survey of human rights museums registers the emergence of a worldwide trend and opens it to critical and sophisticated analysis. Why is the wave happening? What political work is being done through it? The book engages these questions and more and is an indispensable success in doing so."Samuel Moyn, Chancellor Kent Professor of Law and History, Yale University, USA“Curating Human Rights by Robin Ostow is a significant contribution to interdisciplinary scholarship at the intersection of human rights studies, museology, and cultural communication. Rather than treating museums as neutral spaces for historical display, Ostow conceptualizes human rights museums as dynamic cultural-political institutions where multiple actors [including] human rights activists, state authorities, corporations, donors, and visitors interact, negotiate, and often contest one another’s interests. The central argument of the book is that human rights museums are never neutral: they actively construct narratives of human rights violations, selectively foreground certain abuses, and, at the same time, obscure or marginalize others. Drawing on extensive ethnographic and archival research conducted in seven human rights museums across six countries, Ostow consistently asks a fundamental question: to what extent are museums effective instruments for promoting human rights, and where do political, economic, and structural constraints undermine this mission?”Rama Kusuma Irjananta, Firman Akbar Anshari & Raja Kusuma Ibnu Negara, Review in Nordic Journal of Human Rights (March 2026)“Framing museums as spaces for human rights while meeting stakeholder demands represents a persistent challenge for many working in the field…This is the main focus and argument of Robin Ostow’s book, which examines the development of human rights museums across local and global movements. With a clear focus on museum politics and discourses, Ostow critically investigates the narratives, display approaches, and institutional responses developed by museums that position themselves as sites and agents for civil and social justice. The author explores six diverse international human rights museums established in reaction to national conflicts or communal injustices. In each case, Ostow underscores how disputes between minority groups, central states and other stakeholders hinder or otherwise impact on the museum’s efforts to bring about meaningful forms of justice.”Melanie Stavrou, Review in Museums & Social Issues: A Journal of Reflective Discourse (Vol. 19, 2025)

• 1. Introduction: human rights and the museums that display them; 2. Displaying the transatlantic slave trade: from cultural nationalism to universal human rights on the West Coast of Africa. The Maison des Esclaves, Gorée Island, Senegal 1966-2023; 3. Reimagining citizenship and human rights in a museum of land restitution: District Six Museum, Cape Town, South Africa; 4. The Museum as a laboratory for a human rights-based future: The International Slavery Museum, Liverpool, UK; 5. From containing memories of past violence to supporting a human rights-based revolution: The Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos, Santiago, Chile: 2006 – 2023; 6. Corporate citizenship and musealizing human rights: Coca-Cola and the Center for Civil and Human Rights, Atlanta, Georgia, US; 7. Decolonization and Musealizing Human Rights on the Canadian Prairie: The Canadian Museum for Human Rights and The Museum for Canadian Human Rights Violations 2003 – 2023; 8. Human Rights Museums: Their contributions and achievements in promoting human rights. Their limitations and their challenges in the coming years