History museums showcase the narrative of a society by curating artifacts, documents, and exhibits that reflect the culture, achievements, struggles, and evolution of a culture over time. These museums provide a tangible connection to the past, presenting historical events and figures in a contextualized and often interactive manner. History museums can often be nation-building exercises as well, created and staffed by the state or powerful donors to try to encourage a specific view of a culture and its history. Thus, many of these reviews try to not only inform the reader of what the museum can teach, but also take a critical eye to the rhetoric and potential biases these museums express.
Gori, located a ninety-minute drive from Tbilisi, may not catch a visitor’s eye at first. However, the town is forever cemented in history as the birthplace of one of the most well-known leaders in world history: Joseph Stalin. Born Ioseb Jughashvili, Stalin spent the first sixteen years of his life in Gori. While Gori hosts […]