Museet i landskapet och landskapet i museet. En studie av relationer mellan arkitektur, maritimt museum och omgivande miljö

This article studies the relationship between architecture, the museum, the surrounding environment, and narrative, using the example of the M/S Maritime Museum of Denmark (M/S Museet for Søfart). The museum is built underground, and it surrounds and traverses a dry dock. The conclusions are that the architecture creates an impression of being outside reality in a place where the laws of nature are abolished. Oblique angles and twisted shapes disturb one’s sense of balance and de-stabilize the full-body experience. Borders between reality and narrative, past and present are blurred. The museum architecture works as an unstraightening device, making the experience queer. Texts in the exhibits refer to a sailor as someone who is neither among the living nor the dead, and he is referred to as an icon for both hetero- and homosexual people. The narrative created in this M/S museum is a narrative about a queer sailor and a world outside reality.