| Summary: | The aim of this study is to give a historical view upon and examine the development of local and regional cultural history museums in Norway as a topic in Norwegian cultural policy 1900 – circa 1970. The present thesis is divided into four main parts: In part one data sources and theoretical perspectives are presented. The thesis is written in museology and this is the background for a perspective where of local and regional museums arose as a subject requiring development of public politics. The theoretical perspective is how development of politics frequently appears as a choice between various alternatives based on available contemporary material and ideological suppositions. Local and regional museums appear in this perspective as a cultural phenomenon in their own age, a phenomenon to which Stortinget, the Ministry and the museum profession attached both interpretations and conceptions. In part two, entitled “Concern over a group of museums” the parallelism between museum growth and policymaking from 1900 – 1920 is analyzed. Development of politics in these years can be considered as a process where the formation of clearly defined guiding principles for practice by the authorities took place. In the centre of this development of politics was the regulation on governmental subsidy based on a political framework the need to conform to norms related to calculability and equal treatment. At the same time it does appeared the legitimacy to carry out disciplinary measures was nourished by a conception of local and regional museums as unruly and an image of them as a type of “freely growing” institution. In part three, “A formative recognition”, deals with the growing cooperation between The Norwegian Museums Assosiation and the Ministry in the field of local and regional museum and how it influenced the work in this museum. Cooperation with the museum society ensured that a competent apparatus was available to the Ministry. This led gradually to development of a new administrative regime, more specifically a move toward something which can be described as a professional administration. Part four “Consolidation of the politics” examines the development 1945 – circa 1970. The new tendencies would turn out to reflect an increasing awareness of the educational opportunities for future museum personnel, different solutions for establishing good professional guidance for the unmanned museums and, in parallel within the professional museum milieu, an emerging debate on the museums’ role in society. Common for all these initiatives is that they demonstrate what one could characterise as an increasing degree of professionalism. Part four end with the Proposal from the Museum Committee of 1967. This white paper was presented by the Ministry of Churches and Education in 1972. The document was the first of its kind and was intended to be recognised as a comprehensive plan. The most tangible result of the white paper was the arrangement for subsidies to semi-public museums which was introduced in 1975.
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