Cut & paste, copy & paste, or the museum interface
Changes at the Szentendre Open Air Museum
MúzeumCafé 22.
Despite its strong beginnings, before 1989 only one new section, the Small Great Plain, was opened (in 1987) and then the Western Transdanubia part followed in 1993. Further spectacular changes have occurred in the past decade, with four new regions being added, alongside the continuous expansion of another. In addition – and controversially –a broad-gauge railway, a station and rail transport have been established, involving changes to the landscape and natural environment. Considering the market towns of the Great Plain section, continually developed since the 90s, we can see that the institute has changed its approach. This has affected both the form of the exhibitions and also the daily life in the spaces involved. The building of the Jazygian inn functions as a restaurant. Or there is the Nagykunság stock-breeding farm, which the museum reconstructed in the 1930s. These examples show how modelling and interpretation have become more stressed than previously, and that authenticity is no longer (or not only) guaranteed by a documented heritage and genuine objects, but by the experience of themes and spectacles – food, activities, workshops, performances, etc. Things have become more lively, to the great pleasure of visitors, but to an extent the development of buildings and highlighting the structure of villages have become overshadowed. The current functioning of the open-air museum raises the following questions. How can the pleasurable, exciting adventures and experiences of modern interpretive approaches to exhibition in today’s practice be connected to the institution’s own history, the protection of cultural heritage? What role is there today for historical and ethnographic authenticity?