That is, it concretizes historiographic saying by showing. Neither historiographic saying nor showing are privileged in medias res-in a culture saturated in images and textuality, in competing modes of expression each of which has its limits.
Historical consciousness is sparked and constituted from both showing and saying.
Recently, controversies have arisen regarding the representation of history in museums. National museums in America and Germany considered here, such as the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum, the Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the German Historical Museum, have become sites of contention where national histories and personal memories are often at odds. Contemporary art installations in museums which take historical consciousness as their theme similarly raise contentious issues about public knowledge of and personal interest in the past. This essay explores the possibilities for a redefined relationship between personal memory and history that is experienced in contemporary museums. In the late 1980s and 1990s, American popular culture has been increasingly rife with conspiracy narratives of recent historical events.