DOI Heft:
No. 93 (December, 1900)
DOI Artikel:Bröchner, Georg: Open-air museums for London: a suggestion
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19786#0182
Open-Air Museums
to doubts as to whether museums were exempt from
the otherwise apparently universal laws of evolution,
wondering whether they were destined to remain
for ever in scheduled, academic unattractiveness.
I reassured him: there were museums and museums.
There were, for instance, open-air museums—and
why should not London some day have her open-air
museums t Other capitals possess, or are about to
possess, these delightful institutions ; but surely no
city in the world can boast such wide and magni-
ficent possibilities for attaining to the very ideal of
these present-day creations as the capital of the
British Empire !
The open-air museum is a child of our time—
of the last decade, in fact. Its name hails from
Sweden, I believe, no doubt because Dr. Artur
Hazelius is a Swede. To his genius, marvellous
energy, and great liberality Stockholm is in-
debted for her " Skansen," of which more anon.
It is somewhat difficult to accurately define the
scope and the object of the open-air museum.
Originally, I suppose, it was intended to comprise
typical and interesting buildings of bygone days,
faithfully illustrating, both in their exterior and their
interior, the way in which former generations dwelt
and lived, placed in surroundings resembling the
original as much as it was possible. At the same
time as it served the ends of ethnographical science,
it became an object-lesson in history, showing how
the peasant and the parson, the burgher and the
warrior, had lived their life and done their work
in past centuries in the cottage, in the hall, and in
the church. Unlike what has been done, and
done well, at several exhibitions, more especially
by Gamier at the Paris Exhibition of 1889, the
open-air museum shuns all promiscuous and
" cheap" imitation ; it requires original structures,
and to have them re-erected exactly in the old
style, or, where this cannot possibly be done,
counterfeit buildings, that are faithful and accurate
reproductions in material, mode of construction,
etc. Isolated removals of historic structures have
been undertaken years ago. It is, for instance,
on record that the house of Francis I., in the
year 1828, was removed from Moret to Cours-
la-Reine. Some years later the British Museum
had one or two interesting mausoleums brought
to London, and in the year 1844 King Frederick
to doubts as to whether museums were exempt from
the otherwise apparently universal laws of evolution,
wondering whether they were destined to remain
for ever in scheduled, academic unattractiveness.
I reassured him: there were museums and museums.
There were, for instance, open-air museums—and
why should not London some day have her open-air
museums t Other capitals possess, or are about to
possess, these delightful institutions ; but surely no
city in the world can boast such wide and magni-
ficent possibilities for attaining to the very ideal of
these present-day creations as the capital of the
British Empire !
The open-air museum is a child of our time—
of the last decade, in fact. Its name hails from
Sweden, I believe, no doubt because Dr. Artur
Hazelius is a Swede. To his genius, marvellous
energy, and great liberality Stockholm is in-
debted for her " Skansen," of which more anon.
It is somewhat difficult to accurately define the
scope and the object of the open-air museum.
Originally, I suppose, it was intended to comprise
typical and interesting buildings of bygone days,
faithfully illustrating, both in their exterior and their
interior, the way in which former generations dwelt
and lived, placed in surroundings resembling the
original as much as it was possible. At the same
time as it served the ends of ethnographical science,
it became an object-lesson in history, showing how
the peasant and the parson, the burgher and the
warrior, had lived their life and done their work
in past centuries in the cottage, in the hall, and in
the church. Unlike what has been done, and
done well, at several exhibitions, more especially
by Gamier at the Paris Exhibition of 1889, the
open-air museum shuns all promiscuous and
" cheap" imitation ; it requires original structures,
and to have them re-erected exactly in the old
style, or, where this cannot possibly be done,
counterfeit buildings, that are faithful and accurate
reproductions in material, mode of construction,
etc. Isolated removals of historic structures have
been undertaken years ago. It is, for instance,
on record that the house of Francis I., in the
year 1828, was removed from Moret to Cours-
la-Reine. Some years later the British Museum
had one or two interesting mausoleums brought
to London, and in the year 1844 King Frederick