Paper short abstract:

Through extensive use of toxic remedies, the museums have tried to control the risk of loosing their buildings to rot. This practice was seen as successful, but today, we are trying to uncoil the backlash, analyzing the former knowledge practices and to find a future for the toxic heritage.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper we enter the open-air museum through the back door and focus on how the museum's production of timescapes is infused with toxins. Throughout the 20th century, a close entanglement has taken place between pesticides, timber and homes. Museum director Hans Aall's book from 1925 is based on Norsk Folkemuseum's work of preserving artifacts and buildings. Here, he gives a careful description of how the coal-tar product Karbolineum is applied to almost all parts of a museum building during its re-erection to control the risks associated with fungi, insects and rotting wood.

Toxic substances stop decay and protect things from their own materiality. The buildings were intended to last forever as "historical documents". This practice is a linear notion of conservation that derives from the idea of museum as a place for eternity; where time ceases.

Toxic substances do not merely change things epistemologically. The chemical technology also changed the buildings materiality. The museum conservators tried to control the future, but produced a toxic environment where the legacies of past practices endure.

Many buildings at open-air museums are poisonous and becomes a biological risk for surrounding nature, people working at the museum and the audience. The recognition that many of the perhaps most beautiful cultural-historical museum buildings - including medieval buildings - contain toxic residues, will influence future practices. In this paper we will present how risk handling practices have been changing throughout 150 years and reflect on how these risks may be handled today.