When Taiwan emerged from 38 years of martial law in the 1980s, people were faced with the problem of social reconstruction, and a new narrative was put forward centered on the concept of community. The idea was to step up resource allocation to various localities and to encourage public participation and the formation of local identities with cultural policies. In the process, new social values, historical accounts, and ways of life would be created.
Playing both active and auxiliary roles in community building, museums are an important medium for social construction, and in the process the public, community, and quasi-museums have all played a role, and the number and vitality of community and quasi-museums is remarkable. Promoting community building and public participation has also led to distinctive discourses and practices. By collecting, recording, and displaying local history and culture, museums help to build local knowledge and collective memory, while facilitating public participation and agency and the creation of multi-faceted historical writings. Museums thus act as hubs of connectivity where we think about the past, present, and future, while shaping patterns of behavior in our public space.
