This collective work raises questions about the present of

painful pasts in our societies. It does this through a unique, yet

increasingly familiar, cultural object: history museums. Be it slavery,

colonialism, the World Wars, the Spanish Civil War, Auschwitz,

Hiroshima, the communist regimes of Eastern Europe or the wars

in Indochina and Vietnam, how the history of the past is presented

and narrated is analysed, questioned and systematically confronted

with historian knowledge. The deconstruction undertaken in this

work takes into account three dimensions: cultural, social and

political. It highlights memories and representations, as well as areas

of hypermnesia and amnesia. It also identifies and contextualises

major configurations of remembrance. Finally, it reveals the key

issues and what is at stake, the strategies and constraints of the

various key players involved in exposing the painful past of our

humanity. For this reason, the analyses proposed can be qualified

as essays in museohistory.