ปฏิบัติการทางวัฒนธรรมของมิวเซียมสยามในการสร้างความเป็นไทยผ่านนิทรรศการชุด “ถอดรหัสไทย”

Abstract

National museum represents national identity. Museum Siam is a part of the OKMD (Office of Knowledge Management and Development) business, a Mega Project initiated during the Thaksin’s term in office. The museum was established as the first national discovery museum institute to provide new vision for looking into Thai national identity. This paper studies Thai national identity, Kwham pen thai (Thainess) represented in Museum Siam’s new exhibition, “Decoding Thainess”, which was reopened in December 2017. The primary sources used in this study consist of the main exhibition contents, museum’s brochures, and interviews with curators and museum staff. This study finds that the second main exhibition centers around familiar objects easily seen in contemporary Thai society, as meaningful segments of production of Thainess. It also explores how Thainess can be built and maintained, rather than just representing Thai national identity. This is important because showing the process for creating national identity reveals that Thainess is generally regarded as a fixed, uniform notion, but in fact it has been changing through time.