"Mine, yours, ours, no one’s"

This article aims to illustrate how heritagization, together with contested cultural heritage, impact the role of national museums relating to specific ethnic identity groups within ethnically divided countries. Through the elements of competing historical ethnonationalist narratives, negation of a civic identity, and legitimization of an imagined ethnic state, the article compares two museums in one country – the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Museum of Republika Srpska, highlighting the effects of ethnonationalist contestation of cultural heritage and heritagization in a state with weak central control. Findings show that in such settings, national museums with a state-level character become vessels of contested cultural heritage, while museums aimed at strengthening exclusivist ethnic identities gain importance and with that, the status of important sociocultural actors in their respective groups.