Memory, Heritage, and Tradition in the Museum Exhibition Ingrians – The Forgotten Finns

In this article we explore relations between personal, collective, private, and public dimensions of remembrance in the context of the Ingrians – The Forgotten Finns exhibition presented at the National Museum of Finland in 2020 by analyzing it through the lenses of memory, heritage, and tradition. We argue that while promoting remembrance of allegedly absent pasts and experiences of a forgotten group of people, the exhibition simultaneously relied on and reinterpreted earlier nationalistic projects related to heritage and folklore connected to Ingria. Moreover, while the National Museum of Finland enabled the heritagization and mobilization of the exhibition’s message, the exhibition reciprocally supported the message of transformation that the museum arguably wished to convey about itself.