ABSTRACT
In late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century England, public museums were typically dominated by elitist paradigms of culture. Museums were housed in neo-classical buildings and contained a broad spectrum of collections reflecting the popular scientific and historical paradigms of the day, such as geology, archaeology, Egyptology and natural history. Municipal museums in cities such as Birmingham, Liverpool, Norwich, Bristol and Manchester also aped the hierarchies. The dynamic between museums and their public during the period was similarly elitist. The synopsis hints at the complex and multifaceted discourses driving the emergence of folk museum collections during the 1920–1950 periods. The homogenising consequence of a national folk museum was exemplified by the English Folk Museum Committee proposals for the assemblage of a ‘characteristic’ English settlement in 1931. The chapter shows that museums themselves also went through a transformative evolution, from autocratic temples of civilisation to conveyors of something far more diverse and complex.
