Open-air museums are always looking for ways to engage the public. What is the best way to offer visitors a glimpse into the past? How can open-air museums be used to address issues of interpretation and social responsibility in the modern world? Zsolt Sári and Luke Winter join us for December’s #FinallyFriday to discuss their different approaches to these questions.
Dr Zsolt Sári is the deputy director at Skanzen, the Hungarian Open-Air Museum, a predominantly ethnographic museum focusing on life in the 19th and 20th centuries. His work revolves around the communication of traditional Hungarian culture, focusing on the social responsibility of museums to engage with past cultural traumas and modern world issues. Zsolt stresses the essential role of inclusion and representation in museum engagement, where technology can be used to rally all age groups and create a space where people from all walks of life can meet. The Skanzen open-air museum has come up with some surprising initiatives to achieve this goal.
Luke Winter is the founder of Historic Concepts Ltd, which focuses on the construction of historic and prehistoric buildings for open-air museums and heritage centres. He is also specialised in education, focusing on the communication of archaeological and traditional knowledge through volunteer programs and demonstrations. Luke promotes authentic construction work for a firsthand experience of our ancestors ingenuity, but also their struggles and pains.
Join us to hear our speakers discuss their views on how museums can engage with the public, providing authentic storytelling, and the social responsibility of museums and heritage centres in the modern world. This episode of Finally Friday will be live on the EXARC Discord, where our speakers will be there to answer your questions, on Friday 4th December 2020 at 17:00h Central European Time. We look forward to seeing you there! Follow this link to enter the server: https://discord.gg/MJTUwc8. Once you click, you are prompted to present yourself in 1, 2 sentences and then one of us will let you in.
