Landscape Simulation and the Open-Air Museum

Abstract

While open-air museums are commenting upon landscape, they are creating them too. In preserving and presenting landscape elements, assumptions are made about both the landscape being represented and that being created. Open-air museums, such as those in Ulster and Virginia, demonstrate the problems that ensue when historical sites use reconstructions dependent upon authenticated buildings and replicas to combat representational problems. Further problems emerge from considering open-air museums as research centres. Though they distance themselves from history theme parks, through the involvement of historians, archaeologists and folklorists, they nevertheless present historical knowledge as final rather than contingent. Since the exhibits are the museum, it is very difficult to change displays to reflect developments in historical understanding. Balanced explanations are never presented in landscape form, so open-air museums end up presenting old-fashioned views of the past, reflecting their creators' views. The landscapes created by open-air museums, far from being distinct from those of history theme parks, may in fact be presenting images that deny the role of debate within historical research, and provide a past that is as mythical in its own way as the tourist theme park.