ABSTRACT
Museums, art galleries, and public libraries have often provided sites for thematic collections and exhibits focused on fairy-tale cultures. Distinct from fairy-tale themed amusement parks and playground spaces, these exhibits and venues pair creative engagement with fairy-tale narratives with curatorial displays of historical collections and landmark sites, often providing celebrations of specific national figures with a focus on the works and life experiences of fairy-tale authors/auteurs. In the newer context of a children’s museum, for example the Tinderbox Culture Centre for Children located beside the Hans Christian Andersen House and Museum, visitors are invited to engage with fairy-tale narratives through a combination of traditional curatorial display conventions and the active play environments of science-oriented children’s museums. Moreover, the use of digital and mobile technologies has increasingly become a key mode for engagement with the material for young audiences at all museum sites as well as through touristic blogs directed at parents and families. While spaces offer potential critical engagement with tales, recent mediated exhibits often continue to sustain nationalistic discourses and the prioritizing of literary fairy tales and fairy-tale authorship.
