A Museology for Open-Air Museums

Abstract

This paper aims to assess the mechanisms of the Open-Air museum heritage interpretation approach in an attempt to establish a museology definition for the Open-Air museum concept, which can help us to deconstruct the components that make the model distinct and sustainable. This will be achieved by identifying the underlying principles of the Open-Air museum approach, as well as assessing the particular resources associated with the approach. The objective is to establish what a generally applicable Open-Air museum approach would look like and assess how the fundamentals of this approach can impact on sustainable economic development in Open-Air museums as well as other heritage settings. The study has performed an exhaustive literature review on Open-Air museums, and the review findings are corroborated with data from a 2018 survey on Danish and English Open-Air museums and in-depth interviews with management staff from two leading Open-Air museums in both countries. The study demonstrates that Open-Air museums rely heavily on intangible heritage resources to build their mediation approach and that their museology approach has been successful to the extent of developing a successful pedagogical tool that is furthermore a sustainable cultural “product”.

Keywords

• open-air museum museology
• heritage resource management
• sustainable development
• intangible heritage
• museum economy
• museum learning practices