Abstract
Contemporary memorial exhibitions presume emotional intensity produces durable memory, employing affective saturation strategies that neuroscientific research reveals as counterproductive. Emotional arousal consolidates central affective impressions whilst compromising contextual understanding: visitors retain visceral sensations but lose historical processes. This paper develops a theoretical framework integrating Assmann's cultural memory theory, neuroscience of memory consolidation, and care ethics to inform commemorative exhibition design. A four-modality taxonomy, individual, collective, spatial, and sensory, translates psychological memory categories into operationally distinct design approaches. Digital mediation constitutes a transversal narrative apparatus serving memory transmission across all four modalities, functioning as infrastructural support. Design parameters specify spatial configurations, lighting, materiality, and temporal organisation calibrated to biological constraints. Design care challenges dominant memorial practice, proposing that respecting cognitive limits facilitates memorial depth. Three mechanisms, modulation, pacing, and recovery, operationalise care principles, repositioning visitors as active meaning-makers whose memorial formation requires conditions that facilitate rather than overwhelm processing capacity.
Keywords
design care, commemorative exhibition, memory consolidation, care ethics, memorial museums, neuroscience, affective saturation
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.2214
Citation
Vettraino, C. (2026) Caring for Memory: A Neuroscientific Framework for Commemorative Exhibition Design, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.2214
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Included in
Caring for Memory: A Neuroscientific Framework for Commemorative Exhibition Design
Contemporary memorial exhibitions presume emotional intensity produces durable memory, employing affective saturation strategies that neuroscientific research reveals as counterproductive. Emotional arousal consolidates central affective impressions whilst compromising contextual understanding: visitors retain visceral sensations but lose historical processes. This paper develops a theoretical framework integrating Assmann's cultural memory theory, neuroscience of memory consolidation, and care ethics to inform commemorative exhibition design. A four-modality taxonomy, individual, collective, spatial, and sensory, translates psychological memory categories into operationally distinct design approaches. Digital mediation constitutes a transversal narrative apparatus serving memory transmission across all four modalities, functioning as infrastructural support. Design parameters specify spatial configurations, lighting, materiality, and temporal organisation calibrated to biological constraints. Design care challenges dominant memorial practice, proposing that respecting cognitive limits facilitates memorial depth. Three mechanisms, modulation, pacing, and recovery, operationalise care principles, repositioning visitors as active meaning-makers whose memorial formation requires conditions that facilitate rather than overwhelm processing capacity.