Open air museums (or living history museums, or outdoor museums) originated in the late nineteenth century out of the fear that folk architecture and traditional crafts were being lost to modernisation. These museums, which were typically created by transporting historic buildings and equipment from around a region or nation, were seen as a solution to this threat. The popularity of this museum type has not waned, and there are now a few thousand museums of this kind globally. Many received buildings donated by private individuals, as well as from local authorities needing to relocate structures to make way for new infrastructure or development. Though sometimes anachronous and spatially inaccurate, there is value in such buildings being grouped together, as it allows people to experience a region’s geography and history in one place. As with traditional museums, there is an assumption that the structures and artefacts at open air museums are ‘safe’, and will remain accessible to the public in perpetuity.
This paper questions this assumption by looking to numerous global examples of open air museums that have either closed indefinitely or been dismantled and demolished, beginning with the Abbey Folk Museum (England, closed 1930s) and extending through to sites closed in the past decade. This paper reflects on the responsibilities of museum curators, and the (perhaps unreasonable) expectations of donors and the visiting public. The small-scale, volunteer-driven and not-for- profit nature of many of these institutions is highlighted, as are their precarious operating budgets. Finally, the future of structures held by defunct or at-risk museums is considered: should ‘authentic’ heritage structures relocated to these sites be treated differently than their reconstructed/replica structures? In raising these questions, this paper calls for a rethink of the open air museum model, and argues it was perhaps never the ‘solution’ it seemed to be.