Studio: international art (57.1913)

Open-Air Museums in Norway

The development of the

OPEN-AIR MUSEUM IN NOR-
WAY. BY GEORG BROCHNER.

It is with some satisfaction that the present
writer can refer to an article of his published in
The Studio some twelve years ago, its purport
being a plea for the erection of an open-air museum
for London. The suggestion met with warm
approval in different quarters at the time, but more
than a decade had to elapse before the question
was taken up in earnest. Now that there seems
every likelihood of the plan approaching its con-
summation a brief survey of the development of
the open-air museum in other countries during
recent years may not be considered inopportune.
I say other countries, but as a matter of fact it is
only in Scandinavia that the open-air museum has
as yet become an institution—and a much-treasured
and ever-growing institution—although a lively
interest in the same is springing up in diverse
directions. The director of the Skansen in Stock-
holm, the far-famed forerunner and prototype of
open-air museums, informs me that even the town
of Omsk, in once-distant Siberia, has been making
inquiries as to how to set about forming a museum
of this description; and at Arnhem, in Holland, a

society has quite recently been founded for the
same purpose. In Germany, too, a lively interest
is taken in the matter.

There is one feature common to nearly all open-
air museums—as I will continue to call them—and
their number has swelled materially of lat-e years :
they nearly all owe their origin to the fervent and
unselfish enthusiasm and wise circumspection of
one man, and that not a professional museum
official, and most of them have sprung from a very
modest first effort, afterwards, however, in many
cases growing by leaps and bounds.

Norway, to which country I propose to devote
this first article, supplies an excellent and most
striking illustration of this general rule in the
Maihaugen Open-Air Museum, or the Sandvig
collections as they are perhaps more frequently
called, at the town of Lillehammer. M. Anders
Sandvig may well be held up as an ideal organiser
in this connection, and considering that he has only
been able to devote to this work the spare time
which his profession has left him, the admirable
results attained become all the more astounding—
and yet he himself does not by a long way look
upon the Maihaugen as finished or complete.

I should like to give M. Sandvig’s own definition
of his aim with Maihaugen. It was not, he says.

THE LITTI.E LAKE AT THE MAIHAUGEN OPEN-AIR MUSEUM, LILLEHAMMER, NORWAY

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