Toward a national-security museology – government museums as representation spaces in Hong Kong

This article examines how Hong Kong’s state-run museums have been reconfigured to serve the ideological imperatives of the post-National Security Law era. It focuses on two key institutions: the Hong Kong Museum of Coastal Defence, which underwent a major reconceptualization between 2018 and 2022, and the National Security Exhibition Gallery within the Hong Kong Museum of History, which is curated by the Committee for Safeguarding National Security. The article analyses how both state museums employ selective historiography, spatial design, and affective display to recast colonial and wartime past as narratives of Chinese unity and resilience. These institutions exemplify an emerging national-security museology, which fuzes commemoration, pedagogy, and alignment of memory with state ideology. By reflecting on these developments in the context of more pluralistic curatorial practices elsewhere in East Asia, the study reveals how Hong Kong’s museums have become central instruments in the governance of identity, belonging, and historical truth.