# Folk museum

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Museum that deals with folk culture and heritage

"Folklore museum" redirects here. For specific museums called as such, see [Folklore Museum](/source/Folklore_Museum).

[Fife Folk Museum](/source/Fife_Folk_Museum) exhibit.

A [local museum](/source/Local_museum) in [Suomussalmi](/source/Suomussalmi)

A **folk museum**[1] is a [museum](/source/Museum) that deals with [folk culture](/source/Folk_culture) and [heritage](/source/Cultural_heritage). Such museums cover local life in rural communities. A folk museum typically displays historical objects that were used as part of the people's everyday lives.[2] Examples of such objects include clothes and tools. Many folk museums are also [open-air museums](/source/Open-air_museum) and some cover [rural history](/source/Rural_history).

## History

The concept of open-air museums originated in [Scandinavia](/source/Scandinavia) in the late 19th century. The Swedish folklorist [Artur Hazelius](/source/Artur_Hazelius) founded what was to become the [Nordic Museum](/source/Nordic_Museum) in 1873 to house an ethnographic collection of peasant furniture, clothes, tools, toys and other objects. He later set up the open-air museum [Skansen](/source/Skansen) in Stockholm in 1891, where he erected about 150 houses and farmsteads from all over Sweden, transporting them piece by piece and rebuilding them to provide a unique picture of traditional Sweden. Skansen became a model for other open-air establishments in Northern Europe.[3][4]

## Examples

The [National Folk Museum of Korea](/source/National_Folk_Museum_of_Korea) was established in 1945 and provides a history of the Korean people from prehistory to the early 20th century, with over 98,000 artefacts housed in three main exhibition halls. It includes open-air exhibits, such as replicas of typical village structures, grinding mills, huts for rice storage, and pits where [kimchi](/source/Kimchi) pots were stored over winter.[5]

Among the most notable folk museums are:

- [Craft and Folk Art Museum](/source/Craft_and_Folk_Art_Museum), on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, California, now also known as "Craft Contemporary"

- [Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum](/source/Abby_Aldrich_Rockefeller_Folk_Art_Museum), adjacent to historic Williamsburg, Virginia, asserted to be the earliest-opened still-operating museum of American folk art

## See also

- [Local museum](/source/Local_museum)

- [Open-air museum](/source/Open-air_museum)

## References

1. **[^](#cite_ref-1)** ["Folk museum"](https://glosbe.com/en/en/folk%20museum). Glosbe. Retrieved 15 November 2015.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-2)** ["Folk museum"](http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/folk-museum). *[Oxford Learner's Dictionary](/source/Oxford_Learner's_Dictionary)*. [Oxford University Press](/source/Oxford_University_Press). Retrieved 15 November 2015.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-3)** Daniel Alan DeGroff (2012). "Artur Hazelius and the ethnographic display of the Scandinavian peasantry: a study in context and appropriation". *European Review of History: Revue Européenne d'Histoire*. **19** (2): 229–248. [doi](/source/Doi_(identifier)):[10.1080/13507486.2012.662947](https://doi.org/10.1080%2F13507486.2012.662947). [S2CID](/source/S2CID_(identifier)) [143535084](https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:143535084).

1. **[^](#cite_ref-4)** ["Skansen"](https://www.skansen.se/) (in Swedish). Skansen. Retrieved 3 May 2021.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-5)** ["6 Folk Museums Around the World"](https://artsandculture.google.com/story/6-folk-museums-around-the-world/GwUB2I2OghMAvg?hl=en). Google Arts & Culture. Retrieved 3 May 2021.

## External links

- Media related to [Folk museums](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Folk_museums) at Wikimedia Commons

Authority control databases GND

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Folk museum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_museum) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_museum?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.