Real Rooms

There are many opportunities for tourists and cultural explorers to encounter homes that are open to the public. This book questions why we are so fascinated with these real and imagined spaces of domesticity and what it means to recreate home as a museum experience. It examines what desires are met when we walk through the door of a house museum or stumble across a room set in a gallery environment and reveals how these experiences tap into feelings of nostalgia, aspiration, inspiration, curiosity and empathy. The case studies featured in Real Rooms range from famous examples such as the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and the Beatles’ Childhood Homes in Liverpool to the less widely known, but hugely compelling House of Annetta Museum in London and the Weeksville Heritage Center in Brooklyn, New York. All of them seek to preserve, recreate and reimagine lived experience for a visiting audience and communicate a message about the meaning of home. A central chapter of the book, on Museum of the Home’s seven ‘Real Rooms’, sets out the history of the Museum and the ideas behind the rooms and includes an extended interview with the curatorial team. Presenting the perspective of both visitors and curators, the book explores how we package and consume home and make sense of the domestic in an ever-changing world. Illustrated by moving, insightful stories, the book highlights issues of migration, imagination and fantasy, feminism, class, ethnicity, community and time – past, present and future.