Much has been written about the historical allegiance of citizenship and national museums and, although they continue to share the discourse of government, concepts of citizenship have undergone a serious re-evaluation in recent years. This process of revision has also been paralleled in the changing ideas about museum practice that have come to be associated with the new museology.^[1] Traditional nineteenth and twentieth-century museums promoted normative approaches to nation-building ideologies and an institution of citizenship that sought to achieve civic and social reform of the urban masses that were defined in opposition to non-Western and Indigenous peoples (who appeared to be defined by and reduced to ethnographic representations of their ‘vanishing’ cultures). In contrast, the globally savvy ‘new’ museums of the twenty-first century are increasingly being identified by their aspiration to contribute to the meta-narratives of civic unity and a common notion of public good by adopting advocacy roles, accepting ideas about the rights associated with ‘cultural citizenship’ and supporting or developing strategic partnerships with local areas and source communities—Indigenous and migrant. Actually, many new museums (especially those that are national or government funded) endeavour to challenge the idea that culture and politics have a dichotomous relationship. In addition to their aim to preserve culture, they provide a place where culture and identity can be performed, generated and recognised as dynamic and political.

Such museums tend to exist within societies that are pragmatically multicultural, including Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Contextualised by policy ideals that encourage migrants to retain and express their original cultural identity for the enrichment of their adopted home, new museums are quick to recognise that this distinction can itself be a product of the social construction of migrants as ‘people of culture’. The assumed ‘otherness’ of migrants and Indigenous people is what makes them culturally visible and, while this ‘visibility’ works to reinforce the invisibility of the dominant culture, it also narrows the citizenship options available to groups defined in opposition to the majority.^[2] As such, new museums often seek to represent the complexity and debate about terms such as ‘cultural citizenship’ and some also take on board Ruth Phillips’ caution to avoid ‘transmitting a falsely harmonious representation of conflicts not yet resolved in the world outside the museum’.^[3] While new museums invite us to recognise the continuing function of national government as a social (as well as political) act that affects people’s lives in very personal ways, they also insist on the role of museums as technologies that can generate new forms of social interaction and a dynamic form of cultural politics. We can understand these changes to mean that the focus for many national museums in contemporary—postcolonial and multicultural—societies has shifted towards grappling with how to more equitably balance their service to diverse multicultural and Indigenous communities with their traditional commitment to government policy positions and civic reformism.^[4]

My purpose in this essay is to bring the debates about museums, citizenship and multiculturalism that occurred from the 1970s to the present day in Australia into a shared frame. Without seeking to contend that there was an explicit alignment between the transformations that occurred in each of these fields (or even that the debates were interconnected, although evidence suggests this was the case), I examine the role that public cultural representations of Australian-ness have played over this period. My discussion focuses on the National Museum of Australia (NMA). The National Museum was conceptualised in 1975, created by an act of Parliament in 1980, opened in 2001, and was subject to a government-commissioned review of its exhibitions and public programs in 2003.^[5] It was chosen as the venue for ‘Australian Citizenship Day’ ceremonies in 2008, and this year started opening new permanent exhibitions redesigned in response to the 2003 review. The museum’s key dates parallel the development and transformation of multiculturalism in Australia. First mentioned by the Australian Government (by the Minister for Immigration, Al Grassby) in 1973, multiculturalism was presented in 1978 as a long-term government strategy to develop social institutions that would respond to an increasingly pluralist society.^[6] A series of discussion papers and policies pertaining to multiculturalism were published from the 1970s, including: Multiculturalism for All Australians: Our developing nationhood (1982), National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia (1989) and A New Agenda for a Multicultural Australia and Australian Multiculturalism for a New Century: Towards inclusiveness (1999). Multicultural Australia: United in diversity was published in 2003, and this policy remains current today.^[7] As the changes in policy indicate, a contraction of political interest in multiculturalism has occurred during this period and national agendas have been transformed in line with the contemporary global appetite for the ‘soft’ notions of social cohesion and harmony.

Tensions associated with the changing definitions, understandings and experiences of citizenship, museums and multiculturalism were forced to the front of the stage in 2001, when the nation marked its constitutional centenary and when the NMA opened in March as a feature of the centenary celebrations. The festive tone of the centenary was diluted, however, by events that followed later that year, including the ‘Tampa affair’ in August, the 11 September terrorist attacks, and the ‘children overboard’ incident in October.^[8] A federal election—which resulted in the re-election of the Howard-led Coalition Government—was held in November. We can understand that it was for reasons associated with fear and expediency as well as enthusiasm that an intensified interest in national unity came to characterise the political spectrum at this time. Although the subsequent 2003 review of the new National Museum’s exhibitions and programs was tied to the emergent History Wars, the attack on the museum must also be contextualised against a backdrop of the rise of the New Right (and the radicalisation of the Liberal Party) during the 1990s, which elevated ‘political correctness’ to a term of abuse and made anything seen as elite-driven or interest group-driven a target.^[9] In some ways, the assault on academic history and multiculturalism had as much to do with the general attack on the perceived process of policy and decision making as it did with the issues themselves.

The overarching aim of this essay is to explore what agency or authority new museums such as the NMA might have in promoting, normalising or challenging shifting policy positions pertaining to multiculturalism and citizenship. I argue, in the final instance, that government-funded institutions, especially cultural ones, provide a vital opportunity for public policies and community attitudes to intersect and even become mutually informing—a position proposed by the 1982 discussion paper Multiculturalism for All Australians: