Introduction

This collection engages the highly problematic and increasingly important issue of museums, their engagement with “hot” topics (taboo subjects, revisionist histories and political issues), and their roles as part of wider conversations in a networked contemporary public culture. Hot topics such as homosexuality, sexual, racial and political violence, mental illness, massacres, lynching, drugs, terrorism and climate change are now all part of museological culture. A long-established practice of exhibiting “the facts”, “truth”, “national history” or unproblematic conceptions of “other” places and peoples is no longer sustainable in an environment where the self-evidence of all these things is under question. Unproblematic conceptions of national history and the “other” are now giving way to complex narratives and the portrayal of their unsavoury aspects. Previously considered off-limits, the induction of these subjects and their representation in museums has been problematic. While some museums have successfully and meaningfully engaged hot topics1, in reality few are willing to do so because they are seen as high risk due to a fear of political and social repercussions, such as funding withdrawal or the alienation of audiences.