Cseri Miklós, Füzes Endre (szerk.): Ház és ember, A Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum évkönyve 16. (Szentendre, Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum, 2003)

CSERI MIKLÓS: A szabadtéri múzeumok szerepe és lehetőségei a változó világban

Miklós Cseri FUNCTION AND OPPORTUNITIES OF THE OPEN AIR MUSEUMS IN OUR CHANGING WORLD The development of the open-air museums during the last 100 years seems to be steady, some interruptions not considered. The fact that 30% of all visitors of museums worldwide preferred the folk museums, the open-air museums in the '90s provides evidence of this steady development. The 'skanzen specialists' of the world have noticed that phenomena known and revealed already by the general museology, such as the crises of values in both the sender and the receiver of values, the influences of the mass tourism, the enormous development of the visual culture, the general use of computers, the digitalisation etc. didn't leave the open-air museums untouched. Our essay deals with the problems of the open-air museums in the 21

s1 century, with the professional and social challenges they face and with the possible answers to them, without the aim to be totally comprehensive. The first of the most important area of problems is the question of extension of our subjects in space and time. The open-air museums, which traditionally have been created for the purpose of preserving the built and spiritual heritage of rural societies, make an effort by the end of the 20

,h and the beginning of the 21

st century to extend their subjects of research and of exhibition. Beside the social strata of peasants, middle-stand and town citizens, as well as other social layers appear. Compared to the turn of the 19"

1 and 20

lK centuries, they want to present the older times with the help of archaeology and the recent past with the means of sociology and anthropology. By widening the framework given by national states, they aim at the presentation of different diasporas and of migrated communities. The question of creating and conveying values is closely linked to the mentioned change of concept. The question is raised whether the museum goes on just pronouncing subjects or is willing to teach how to have doubts, how to see and notice fine nuances and differences, further, whether it offers opportunities for dialogues and interactivity, gives practical advice for the solution of social problems, and whether it helps the survival and the strengthening of the identity with all the weight of the cultural heritage, which it owns. The essay illustrates these targets with quite a few examples. The tourism affects the open-air museums with negative and positive challenges. Our study analyses the favourable and disadvantageous impacts of the „eternal drive for renewal" of the open-air museums. We have to underline that due to their openness, the open-air museums conquered a considerable segment of the leisure program offers in our post-modern times. The festivals, interactive events, programs spiced with gastronomy and wine have a complex impact on the tourist, they might have the most complex impact among all museums. The essay analysis the efforts made in Hungary and abroad to make the museum 'alive'. Furthermore, the question is raised, how the open-air museums may face the change of visual culture, which nowadays attacks like an explosion man and his environment. The answer is not a positive one: with difficulty. The open-air museums, based on authentic interiors, give up part of their original objectives and mechanism of impact when allow visual technical methods to enter the museums. These don't mobilise the human intellect and as a consequence, the house and its interior become a mere stage. The essay mentions the appearance of study exhibitions as a positive example. The author deals with special care and in detail with the challenges of the digitalisation and the network communications. We have here a new epoch of accessibility to the collections, since the conditions of access and of learning about culture have become democratic to an extent never seen so far, and on the other hand, a completely new form and dimension of accessibility appears here due to digitalisation and the Internet. The virtual skanzen programs however, include a danger: the number of visitors might decrease. But we feel sure that not even the most perfect digital program can replace the "3D skanzen-athmosphere" - the smells, the authentic objects and interiors. It is hard to imagine how much the digitalisation is able to extend the limits of numeric and analogous treatment and publication: access to the complete knowledge of the museum becomes a realistic goal. However, we cannot ignore the dangers: the consequence of digitalisation might be a preference of the copies and neglect of the original objects, which would cause damage to the original ideal of open-air museum. Thus, it is clear that the steady development of a museum type, as it was established at the end of the 19"' century, has to be put on the correct rails under circumstances, when the world outside the museums itself is not able to give right answers to the challenges of the modern times. This process will need some decades and the transformation will be as painful and as difficult as the process of developing of the open-air museums used to be everywhere in the world. Still, our results so far, our knowledge by the society and our flexibility suggest that it is not hopeless.