Mapping the Role of Museums in Memory-Making and Memory-Retention: A Scoping Review of Practices, Narratives, and Visitor Engagement Strategies

In the eighteenth century, museums were created by scholars and intellectuals who wanted to preserve history and culture. Over the years, museums have progressively evolved past their traditional role of acting as an archival institution to preserve history and culture and being active agents of education to being a tourism hotspot and a memory institution. However, the processes of memory-making and memory-retention lack clarity and are methodologically inconsistent. This scoping review aims to explore interdisciplinary research on how historical and cultural-centric museums facilitate memory outcomes (memory-making and memory-retention) through different factors such as curatorial strategies, narrative framing and visit engagement practices. Using the PRISMA-ScR framework, which draws literature across different fields such as museum studies, tourism, memory theories and psychology, a total of 33 articles from the databases Scopus and Web of Science (WoS), dated between 2000 and 2025, revolving around national, cultural, historical and heritage centric museums, emphasising on traditional and modern museums, have been selected to do this scoping review. The findings highlighted various evolving roles for museums, as well as different traditional and contemporary museology practices that pertain to inclusivity.