An agricultural museum is a

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make thes ...

dedicated to preserving agricultural history and heritage. It aims to educate the public on the subject of agricultural history, their legacy and impact on society. To accomplish this, it specializes in the display and interpretation of artifacts related to

agriculture Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people t ...

, often of a specific time period or in a specific region. They may also display memorabilia related to farmers or businesspeople who impacted society via agriculture (for example, size of the land cultivated as compared to other farmers) or agricultural advances (for example, technology implementation). An agricultural museum is said to be

diachronic Synchrony and diachrony are two complementary viewpoints in linguistic analysis. A ''synchronic'' approach (from grc, συν- "together" and "time") considers a language at a moment in time without taking its history into account. Synchronic l ...

if it presents the entire narrative associated with subject of agriculture within its walls, or to be synchronic if it limits its displays to a single experience.Kilgerman, Eric.
Sites of the Uncanny: Paul Celan, Specularity and the Visual Arts
', p. 255 (2007).

Types of agricultural museums

Agricultural museums often specialize in one or more of three aspects of the farm-food process. Those specializing on the crop cultivation and farming aspect of agriculture are known as farm museums. These would include farm museums like Barleylands Farm Museum,

Farmers' Museum The Farmers' Museum is located in Cooperstown, New York, and is one of the best-known attractions in the town. Just north of Cooperstown, it overlooks Otsego Lake and recreates rural life from the 19th century through exhibits and interactive ...

, and Aulestad. Others, like Balmoral Grist Mill Museum in Balmoral Mills, Nova Scotia, focus on the production aspect of the process; many mill museums, including Frohnauer Hammer, Mazonovo, and the oldest commercial flour mill in North America, Moulin du Petit-Pré, fall into this group. Still others, like the

Tao Heung Foods of Mankind Museum Tao Heung Foods of Mankind Museum (), formerly Foods of Mankind Museum, is the first 'foods of mankind' museum in Hong Kong. It is one of the few museums not run and funded by the government. It was housed in a two-floored building at 1 Lok Tin ...

Fo Tan Fo Tan is an area of Sha Tin District, New Territories, Hong Kong. It was developed as a light industrial area, but this activity has declined markedly in recent years. There are residential areas to the east, alongside the MTR line, and in the ...

Shatin Sha Tin, also spelt Shatin, is a neighbourhood along Shing Mun River in the eastern New Territories, Hong Kong. Administratively, it is part of the Sha Tin District. Sha Tin is one of the neighbourhoods of the Sha Tin New Town project. The ne ...

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...

, the Potato Museum, and the

Spam Museum The Spam Museum is an admission-free museum in Austin, Minnesota dedicated to Spam, a brand of canned precooked meat products made by Hormel Foods Corporation. The museum tells the history of the Hormel company, the origin of Spam, and its pla ...

, are focused on the post-production and food-consumption aspect of agriculture. Other agricultural museums, like the Kregel Windmill Museum, the Irish Agricultural Museum, and Danmarks Traktormuseum, display agricultural machinery. Agricultural museums may further specialize in educating the public about one single crop or they may be multi-themed, covering several or many crop types. For example, sugar production is the only subject matter of focus at the sugar museums of Berlin Sugar Museum (the world's oldest), Taiwan Sugar Museum, and Museo de la Caña y el Ron. Most mill museums are non-operational, but the

Watson's Mill Watson's Mill is an historic flour and gristmill in Manotick, Ontario, Canada. It is the only working museum in the Ottawa area and one of the very few operating industrial grist mills in North America. Watson's Mill still sells stone-ground whol ...

is a rarity as a working museum in

Manotick Manotick ( ) is a community in Rideau-Jock Ward in the rural south part of the City of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It is a suburb of the city, located on the Rideau River, immediately south of the suburbs Barrhaven and Riverside South, about from ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central C ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

, still in operation.

Scope of the galleries

Some agricultural museums, like

Canada Agriculture and Food Museum The Canada Agriculture and Food Museum (french: Musée de l'agriculture et de l'alimentation du Canada) is a national agricultural museum in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Occupying several buildings within the Central Experimental Farm, the museum ope ...

, present agriculture in general as it relates to an entire country, while others, like the

, aim to cover the entire scope of agriculture of the human civilization throughout history. Still others, like Sugar Cane and Rum Museum present the agriculture of a particular farming species and focused on a particular food and end product.

Open air vs. indoor museums

In terms of the venues for these museums, some agricultural museums are located in former mills, abandoned buildings, or warehouses, such as Alexander & Baldwin Sugar Museum. Other museums, on the other hand, are housed in structures specifically designed to accommodate an agricultural museum, such as

Thailand Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is b ...

's Golden Jubilee Museum of Agriculture. The

museum architecture Museum architecture has been of increasing importance over the centuries, especially more recently. A challenge for museum architecture is the differing purposes of the building. The museum collection must be preserved, but it also needs to be made ...

in such agricultural museums has been specifically designed and tailored to the purpose for that space. Agriculture museums can also be located in the

open air Open air, open-air or openair may refer to: *'' Open Air'', a BBC television program * Open-air cinema or outdoor cinema * Open-air concert, a concert taking place outside *Open-air museum, a distinct type of museum exhibiting its collections out- ...

, such as

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...

's National Museum of Agriculture. Overall, open-air agricultural museums abound: other examples of open-air based agricultural museums are International Wind- and Watermill Museum,

Church Farm Museum The Village Church Farm, formerly known as Church Farm Museum, is an open-air museum of local and agricultural history near Skegness, Lincolnshire, England. There are a number of traditional indigenous buildings, including a thatched " mud and s ...

, and Julita Abbey. Some open-air agricultural museums may present the history of how entire villages subsisted from their agriculture and may include many buildings spread over many acres; this is the case with the Kommern Open Air Museum. Other agricultural museums are strictly indoors-based and occupy just one building, such as the Agricultural Museum of Malaysia.

Animal vs. crop agriculture

Some farm museums deal with the farming of animals as opposed to crops. This is the case of Lithuanian Museum of Ancient Beekeeping.

Ownership, size and exhibitions

As for ownership and operation, some agricultural museums, such as

, in

, and the Adatepe Olive Oil Museum in

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula in ...

, are privately owned. Others, like the Agricultural Museum of Egypt, in

Cairo Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the Capital city, capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, List of ...

, are a publicly owned national patrimony.

External links

Association for Living History, Farm and Agricultural Museums

References

{{reflist Types of museums