In this chapter, we will look at the stories that the Deaf Museums in our study tell: many start with the story of Deaf Education, of a Deaf School or the story of an important national Deaf educator. Others tell the story of the national or regional Deaf community.

The stories that Deaf Museums tell differ in their focus, and sometimes in their perspective. 

Partly, this depends on the target group of each Museum. In our Survey of Deaf Museums, (see elsewhere on this website), we asked our contact persons who the target group of their Museum was. They all said that their Museum was both for Deaf people and for hearing people. In most cases: hearing people who are already interested in Deaf history or the Deaf community: sign language students, hearing family members of Deaf people, professionals working with or for Deaf people.

But the Norwegian Deaf Museum specifically mentions that they also want to attract hearing people who do not know anything about deafness yet - see below. 

The Silent Museums and Exhibitions in Vienna, Rome, and Moscow , and the Rom X exhibition of the Norwegian Museum of the Deaf are specifically targeted at hearing people.  They want hearing visitors to learn and experience what it is like to be deaf. 

The stories that Deaf Museums in Europe tell, can be located on a line,  a continuum,  that goes from (almost) "for Deaf people only", to "(almost) for hearing people only".  Or from 'By and for Deaf People' to 'With Deaf people, for Deaf and hearing people'. 

It depends on the definition of "Deaf Museum"  whether these last Museums - the ones all the way on the right - are also considered as examples of "Deaf Museums" or "Deaf Exhibitions".  Since some of these are the only ones that are currently run as commercial enterprises without external funding, we will include them as examples in later chapters, because they may have important lessons to teach. 

Below you will find the stories that the Deaf Museums in Europe want to tell. 

An easy example of how important perspective is, are the stories that different people will tell about Cochlear Implants: a story that can be told from at least 3 different perspectives:

• A technical perspective: who invented the Cochlear implant, how do they transfer sound, how do they work?
• A mainstream perspective: Cochlear implants, finally a 'cure' for deafness!
• A Deaf culture perspective: Cochlear implants are part of a long history of inventions and interventions by hearing professionals that were made to 'cure' Deaf people. But Deaf people  are not sick, they do not need a 'miracle cure'.

Another example:

Speech training from the perspective of a teacher and a hearing photographer:

Brother teaches articulation in front of the class. Inst. for the Deaf, St. Michielsgestel. 1940

Source: https://resolver.kb.nl/resolve?urn=urn:gvn:SFA02:1001467

And: speech training from the perspective of a Deaf adult, remembering speech training from the perspective of the child:

This video was produced by Statped with support from the National Library. Link to project: http://www.acm1.no/orgfortellinger/ In this project, 6 deaf people of different ages met at an author workshop. The result was 19 stories based on self-experienced events, that reflect a bit of how deaf people have lived and are living their lives.

Deaf Museums in Europe differ in their perspectives. The Museum of Deaf Education in the Netherlands had a hearing curator; the Museum was located in the old building of the School for the Deaf in Saint Michielsgestel. The Museum told its story mostly from the perspective of (hearing) educators.

The Deaf Museums that are run by Deaf professionals choose a 'Deaf perspective'. It is an important question: who owns Deaf History, the Deaf Heritage? Who can tell its stories? 

The Norwegian Deaf Museum (NDM) is somewhere in the middle of the Deaf Museums continuum that goes from 'for Deaf only' to 'for hearing people only'. But it started out as an exhibition that was mostly for the Deaf community.

The NDM is now part of a mainstream museum, the Trøndelag Folk Museum. It was set up by hearing curators in close cooperation with the local Deaf community.

It is located in the old building of the first school for the Deaf in Norway, in Trondheim. This is what Hanna Mellemsether, a former curator at the Trøndelag Folk Museum, wrote about the change from a 'Deaf only" Museum to a Museum that is for Deaf and hearing people. And how this has changed the story that the Museum tells:

"NDM started as a private collection in rented locations in the now abandoned School for the Deaf, in Trondheim. Two rooms were filled with hearing-aids, books, photographs and other artefacts mainly from the old school that was shut down in 1991.

The exhibition at that time was of interest to those who had been pupils at deaf schools, or those who knew someone who had been – but not to many outside this narrow group. The primary motivation behind that early phase of the museum was the need to collect and preserve the histories of deaf people from a period that will be forgotten when the last generation, those who lived their formative years in Norway's segregated deaf schools, dies out. " 

When the Deaf Museum became part of the Trøndelag Folk Museum, the target group and therefore the story (narrative) of the Museum changed:

"The politicians who, in 2001, decided that the collection should be transferred to Trøndelag Folk Museum, might have intended us to create a small exhibition about the deaf community and the history of the deaf schools in Norway, within the confines of the existing folk museum.

We soon realized, however, that if the Museum of Deaf History and Culture was to become more than an exhibition for a small group of people with specialized interests and experiences, we had to create a much larger project and, at the same time, secure the old school as a site for this development.

(..)

An important narrative in the Norwegian Museum of Deaf History and Culture is how a cultural group has emerged and changed its position and identity within Norwegian society.

The museum shows methods, materials and individuals that, in different ways, have contributed to this process. This does not mean that the factual history of how deaf people have lived their lives, how schools and organizations functioned, is unimportant.

In the new exhibition the material history of past life will still be presented as an important part of the memory work of the deaf community. After all, making the deaf community visible is one of our main goals as a museum.

But we also want to address an audience beyond the deaf community, and to raise questions and highlight dilemmas that are relevant to other parts of modern society. Therefore we have chosen to let facts and stories in deaf history throw a critical light on aspects of our shared modern society.

At NDM we have elected to present different (and often sharply conflicting) views and standpoints, not as dogmas, but as something to be reflected upon and discussed with and by the visitors. Our aim is therefore not to tell a true and uncontested story, but to provoke reflection and afterthoughts that may challenge prejudice.

By focusing on Deaf culture, and its relation to mainstream culture, we aim to challenge prejudices towards differences in general, whether on the basis of race, class, gender, sexuality or disability. The ways in which ‘we’ interact with and treat otherness in our society have changed through time and across space. The new exhibition aims to challenge people's attitudes and prejudices and hopefully create greater respect for diversity by exposing the narrowness of the concept of normality."

(from: A Museum for All? The Norwegian Museum of Deaf History and Culture, Hanna Mellemsether.  In: Re-presenting Disability: Activism and Agency in the Museum, 2013)

The collection at the NDM is set up in a professional way and is accessible and of interest to both Deaf and hearing visitors. 

The museum's permanent exhibition portrays the life of C.O. Malm.

Carl Oscar Malm, also known as C. O. Malm and Carl Oskar Malm was Finland's first teacher of the deaf, founder of the first school for the deaf in the country, and the father of Finnish Sign Language. 

The history of the sign language community is presented through changing exhibitions and the webmuseum.

The room of C.O. Malm in the museum

The story that the Deaf Museum and Archive, UK tells is important for the Deaf community and for Deaf children and their families. But the target group is small, as is the number of visitors.

See the interview with Peter Jackson for more information. 

The plans for this Museum were born when Armand Pelletier received many original manuscripts, some of which were written by Ferdinand Berthier, the deaf-mute advocate. Among these manuscripts, for example, was an original petition from 1830 during the “revolution” against the oral education of students at the Institution des Jeunes Sourds de Saint Jacques in Paris.

Now, the Museum presents a permanent exhibition dedicated to Ferdinand Berthier and temporary exhibitions on specific themes.

"Hands Up" is a Museum or exhibition in Vienna, Austria at the other side of the continuum that goes from 'for Deaf visitors only' to 'for hearing visitors'.

"Hands Up" is mostly for hearing people. There are a number of these "Deaf Experience' exhibitions similar to "Hands Up": in Hamburg, Rome, Norway, Russia - see https://www.deafmuseums.eu/index.php/en/deaf-museums/deaf-exhibitions

The "Hands Up" exhibition tells the story of Deafness. It uses 'immersion' techniques (see Chapter 6) to let hearing people experience - for a short time - what it is like to be deaf. Visitors wear ear protection, speaking is not allowed. The guides are Deaf sign language users.

Visitors learn about Deaf History, Deaf Culture and they learn some signs.

Most of these 'Deaf Experience' exhibitions are located in tourist centres: Vienna, Rome, Hamburg, Moscow. Several of them share a location with an exhibition about blindness such as "Dialogue in the Dark' in Vienna. 

The "Hands Up"  exhibition is commercial business; it does not receive any funding, all costs are paid for from the tickets sold to visitors. 

You can read more about the "Hands Up" exhibition in the interview with Monika Haider on this website. 

These 'Deaf Experience' exhibitions are important because they make hearing people more aware of what it is like to be deaf - even if only for 45 minutes. After visiting the exhibition, some visitors want to know more, some sign up for a sign language course. 

Maybe "Hands Up" is not a Deaf Museum - but is it a Deaf exhibition? Or an exhibition about the Deaf?