10 Expertise: Traditional

Costumes at the Museum

In 1935 the Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art, incollaboration with the Heimat Society, set up an informationcentre at the museum dealing with traditional costumes.This was in response to the needs of ideologically diversegroups who were active in folk culture as well as to politicaldemands. This new field of activity widened the museum'spublic and brought in new forms of museum practice. Inaddition, it upgraded the museum to a quasi- national centreof expertise in what was a significant aspect of identitypolitics. Until the 1960s, the museum certified selected fab-rics and traditional products as' authentic' and classifiedothers as' kitsch' or' fake'.