Three Museum Exhibitions about Migration Focus on Trauma but Obscure its Causes

When museums become sites of political struggle, it is usually because they have been criticized from outside. Lately, activists and artists have cast these institutions as storehouses of capital and monuments to colonial power, challenging them on everything from the looting of Indigenous artifacts to the influence of opioid profiteers. But the global far-right resurgence over the last few years has also given museums an opportunity to act politically in ways they rarely imagined. Xenophobic na