Historical Developments of the Museum-School Relationship: The Swedish Case, 1930–1970

This paper examines the development of museum education for schools with mid-twentieth-century Sweden as an empirical example, focusing on the Nordic Museum (Nordiska museet) and the Swedish Museum of Natural History (Naturhistoriska riksmuseet). At the Nordic Museum, more advanced educational practices and outreach activities emerged rapidly during the interwar years, whereas at the Museum of Natural History, comparable changes occurred first in the 1960s. The study analyses how the two museum institutions’ goals, activities and modes of audience engagement shaped their educational programmes and interaction with schools. It identifies how the relation with schools evolved from small-scale, locally supported initiatives in the 1930s and 1940s to broader, state-supported national networks in the 1960s as museums were integrated into a national public education framework to support the realisation of the democratic welfare society.