The Open-Air Museum of Bokrijk: Staging Pre-Modern Architecture in the Margins of the 1958 World Fair

Abstract

At many late nineteenth- and twentieth-century World Fairs architecture was an important tool in the representation of national identities. Pavilions at these Fairs offered telling ‘scenery’, against which to display old and new objects, machines, art collections, interior designs and social customs. They formed architectural settings that contributed to the staging of the nation’s vision of its own past, present or future. Furthermore, as the architectural historian Edward N. Kaufman has pointed out, the late nineteenth-century World Fairs were important forerunners of the first open-air museums. In these more permanent exhibition settings, architecture also often played a crucial role in the representation of national or regional identities. In many open-air museums buildings were conceived as important exhibits providing visitors, sometimes implicitly, with information about the nation or region’s past: information considered fundamental to its present or future identity.