Cseri Miklós, Füzes Endre (szerk.): Ház és ember, A Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum évkönyve 12. (Szentendre, Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum, 1998)

MERIKE LANG: Észt Szabadtéri Múzeum. Alapkoncepció és a fejlődés jelenlegi tendenciái

The principles of interpreting the exposition of the Estonian Open Air Museum will be shortly formulated as follows: 1. Static interiors depicting the living conditions or situations characteristic to the corresponding period, where the visitor has the possibility to use his own imagination in reflecting on the performed exposition; 2. Active farm guides/stewards to inform the visitors in farms expressing broader subjects; 3. Demonstrations of handicrafts and everyday proceedings together with explanations and the possibilities for the visitors tojóin in the activities; 4. Chronicle of a concrete farm (biographies of the inhabitants) designed as a showcase-exhibition in one of the side rooms, or a thematical interior; 5. Accentuation or explanation of a certain event with the help of technical means (sound, image) or mannequins; 6. Keeping of domestic animals in a cattle-shed specially reconstructed for this occasion; 7. Establishment of farm gardening that, till now, is insufficiently represented; 8. A short elementary course of vernacular architecture in order to consider the speciality of an open-air museum as a museum of architecture. Under no circumstances would we like to enliven the museum totally as we would like to prevent the agressive intrusiveness with respect to the visitors. At the same time, sufficient possibilities should be offered for maximum forwarding of the knowledge that is being preserved in the museum. A relatively recent tendency in the Estonian museology is museum education, i. e. activities aimed for certain target groups, carried out on the initiative of the museum. In 1994 the Estonian Open Air Museum has started a project called „Children's Museum". The Children's Museum can be regarded as one of the facets of the general cultural educational work in museums. It deals with thorough introduction of folk culture, improvement of school programmes of history and country study, popularization of both the museum and museum profession, and thus educating the museum visitor. Due to the big demand, the calendar red-letter day activities - Shrove Tuesday, Easter, Midsummer Eve, Christmas - were developed to big activities for the public. One of the oldest public activities of the Estonian Open Air Museum is the handicrafts fair. Along with the above mentioned annual activities and systematic work of the past years, the Estonian Open Air Museum had the courage to perform temporary exhibitions and stagings that have strived for discussions and shocked the Estonian museology and public. In 1994, the museum performed a big temporary project on the occassion of the national singing festival. The exhibition „Wherc did the Peasant get his Songs from" was exposed in the rooms of the Estonian History Museum. The conventional museologists-ethnographers were schocked by the exposition, wherc the historical artefact as such did not acquire any individual importance. The rooms were filled with nameless artefacts just heaped up or assembled in figurative compositions, carrying symbolic meaning. By using background sounds of thematic old Estonian folk songs, noises of work, babbling of babies, coronachs, merrymaking in the inn etc. and even the effects of smell, the visitors were given the knowledge that the Estonian songs have grown from among the customary life and the exhibited ordinary things. This was the first conceptional exhibition in Estonia. In December 1996, during the three-day Christmas activities a happening named „Tiger leap" was performed in the Sassi-Jaani farm. The big drying-room of an old farmhouse was filled up with modern luxury furnishings and the newest householdry equipment by following the principle of contrast. The room was „inhabited" by a couple comically dressed in folk costumes whose dialogue and bustling about the room shed a mocking light on the emptiness of the contemporary material man. Along with the lively cultural and educational activities, the small museological staff of the Estonian Open Air Museum has to dedicate to a gigantic work - the etnographical collection of 56 000 units as well as the archive of photos and negatives has to be entered to the computers, the museum publications have to be renewed after a 20-year standstill of the Soviet period, a system of modern signposts and signboards has to be elaborated for the exposition, communication and security systems are to be built etc. At the same time, one has to face the problems of ageing administrative buildings and too tight depositories.