POLIN Reading Room series. Book launch: "Artifacts and Allegiances: How Museums Put the Nation and the World on Display"

By some estimates, one out of every seven people in the world today is an international or internal migrant. Our cities are increasingly diverse — people of over 184 different nationalities call London a home. The question arises: how do we learn to get along? Museums have always played a leading role in creating national citizens. In today’s reality, do they also create global citizens who engage actively with diversity they encounter next door and across the world?

• 26 June (Monday), 7 PM, free admission, discussion will be held in English with simultaneous translation into Polish

In her book, Peggy Levitt takes us around the globe to tell us a compelling story of how museums today are making sense of immigration and globalization. Based on firsthand conversations with museum directors, curators, and policymakers, descriptions of current and future exhibitions as well as insider stories about famous paintings and iconic objects that define collections, Levitt provides a insight into how different kinds of institutions balance nationalism and cosmopolitanism. By comparing museums in Europe, the United States, Asia, and the Middle East, she weaves a fascinating story of a sea change underway in the museum world at large.

Professor Peggy Levitt will talk about her book with Professor Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett of POLIN Museum and  Dr. Łucja Piekarska-Duraj of the Jagiellonian University. The discussion will be moderated by Profesor Izabela Grabowska of the SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw.

The discussion is organized in cooperation with SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities within the series of The Challenges of Humanities of the 21^st Century of The Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program.

The event is organized within Global Education Outreach Program.

The discussion was made possible thanks to the support of the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture, the William K. Bowes, Jr. Foundation, and the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland.