Following the heart ♥: Managing collective public emotions in museum collections documenting the aftermath of terror

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Title: Following the heart ♥: Managing collective public emotions in museum collections documenting the aftermath of terror
Authors: Hrechaniuk, Yelyzaveta, 1990, Sjöberg, Johanna, 1976
Source: International Journal of Heritage Studies (IJHS). 31(7):935-955
Subject Terms: Heritage, rapid response collecting, memorialisation, visual culture, material culture, following methods
Description: Red, pink and in national colours, whole and shattered, drawn by hand and digital, hearts are everywhere in spontaneous public commemoration. Despite this omnipresence, heart imagery has largely been taken for granted. This article follows hearts across two collections in three Stockholm-based museums documenting the 2017 terrorist attack in the Swedish capital. We explore how hearts circulate and evolve, visually and together with accompanying texts, connecting the visual and material culture of commemoration with broader popular visual culture. We also explore the politics of emotions and the emotional work that hearts perform. We suggest that, alongside commemorating victims of the attack, public commemoration is also a site of social and political engagement and calls for social justice. This has implications for heritagising and memorialising terrorist attacks, in particular, the archival and museum collections used here, which document acts of terror and public reactions to them.
File Description: electronic
Access URL: https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-215908
https://liu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1980703/FULLTEXT01.pdf
Database: SwePub
Description
Abstract:Red, pink and in national colours, whole and shattered, drawn by hand and digital, hearts are everywhere in spontaneous public commemoration. Despite this omnipresence, heart imagery has largely been taken for granted. This article follows hearts across two collections in three Stockholm-based museums documenting the 2017 terrorist attack in the Swedish capital. We explore how hearts circulate and evolve, visually and together with accompanying texts, connecting the visual and material culture of commemoration with broader popular visual culture. We also explore the politics of emotions and the emotional work that hearts perform. We suggest that, alongside commemorating victims of the attack, public commemoration is also a site of social and political engagement and calls for social justice. This has implications for heritagising and memorialising terrorist attacks, in particular, the archival and museum collections used here, which document acts of terror and public reactions to them.
ISSN:13527258
14703610
DOI:10.1080/13527258.2025.2520759