prof Dusan Moskon, Ljubljana SI
LIVE MUSEUMS - CHALLENGE AND REALITY
Most of the open-air museums, so-called skansens, are a synthesis of examples of vernacular architecture on a common location.
The introduction of areal "exhibits" such as architecture, rooted into the environment with all its components, cannot be the same as an exhibition of individual ethnological samples from various areas in a common museum location.
The span between the degraded majority architectural landscape on one side and the protected national parks on the other in much too big. The open-air museums cannot fill this gap but they can reduce it. The challenge is uncontested under the condition that we introduce them as live museums. These are to include several aspects:
a/ the cultural aspect: preservation of the memory of our past in an autochthon
presentation
b/ the educational aspect: presentation and survey of our vernacular architecture,
with life in the past
c/ the touristic aspect: daily visit to the museum and experiencing the vacation
village or hamlet than today's country tourism: active vacation with a time jump of at least one or two centuries including a direct insight into the rural life of the time.
In spite of the 14 architectural regions of Slovenia (according to Fister) we shall concentrate on four to begin with: the Karst - Primorje, the Upper Carniola, the Lower Carniola and the Drava - Mura region, for which we chose the most suitable locations.