Rethinking the Role of Gardens as Active Resources for the Spatialisation of Memory in House Museums: Best Practices at the Art Museums of Skagen

One of the distinctive features of house museums refers to their ability to put visitors in contact with history through direct experience, that is, enabled by the activation of objects and spaces as communicative and socio-cultural catalysts. Unlike other institutions, these heritage systems perform this task through a spatialisation of memory, based on the signification of the museum building not only as a “container” but also as “content”.The performance of this task is generally assigned to interior rooms, while the gardens that often complement these sites are managed as mere backdrops for circulation, rest, or other facilities. This paper aims to problematise the recurrent use of house museum gardens as mere containers, and to shed light on their strategic potential not only as spatial but also as cultural resources. This goal is addressed through a qualitative, interpretive case study that provides evidence of this potential by examining the experiences developed in the last twenty years at the Art Museums of Skagen (a single institution incorporating three sites), which exemplify how gardens can contribute to the spatialisation of memory performed at historic sites.