ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the museological frame of the house museum; the experiences of visitors in the house museum; the interpretive techniques invoking the visual and spatial realism of materiality to recount the house's historical story; the challenges of authenticity thus created; and the possibility that within this construct, “authenticity” really doesn't matter so much. It presents an introduction to the history, production, and consumption of museumised houses. The chapter shows their origins, how they construct-and are constructed by-their staff and visitors, and the mechanisms of intangible interpretation with which they are clothed for public presentation. The most frequent rationale for museumising a house is also the oldest: an association with a famous person. The cult of Great Men dominated historiography in the nineteenth century; from the mid-twentieth century, it was overturned by social history, with a focus on studying the lives of the marginal and excluded in society.
