The role of the museum has found itself, from the last decade to the present, at the center of an extended debate. It is expected to foster broader and more complex critical reflections, responding to that multi-temporal challenge that asks for holding together past, present and future. In a new and radical perspective for the institution, capable of addressing current representational challenges, museums working from the so-called difficult heritage constitute an interesting category for the analysis of new museum practices. These consider absent testimonies, silenced by established narratives, and complicate responsibilities for past traumas. If the new museology suggests how the museum is called to realize a correspondence between cultural representation and social change, difficult heritage and its rewritings in the exhibition space can become useful tools for the emergence of counter-hegemonic narratives and new shared awarenesses in relation to the controversial issues of our past and present.