The Categorization Project of House Museums has completed its first phase. 150 house museums all around the world have taken part in this project and provided all relevant information by filling the given forms. The museums have been grouped under different categories (or typologies) listed by Demhist , as detailed here below. All the participants are kindly invited to verify whether resulting evaluation matches well with each museum own interpretation. You may find the “Categorization Project First Phase” pdf also in the Demhist Web Site/Projects

Demhist Categorization Project House Museums Typologies

1. Personality houses (writers, artists, musicians, politicians, military heroes, etc)
2. Collection houses (the former home of a collector or a house now used to show a collection)
3. Houses of Beauty (where the primary reason for a museum is the house as work of art)
4. Historic Event houses (houses that commemorate an event that took place in/by the house)
5. Society houses ( house museums established for no historic reason by a local community seeking a social cultural facility that may reflect its own identity)
6. Ancestral homes (country houses open to the public)
7. Royal power houses (palaces open to the public )
8. Clergy houses (monasteries, abbots’ houses and other ecclesiastical buildings with a former or current residential use , open to the public)
9. Humble homes (vernacular buildings such as modest farms valued as reflecting a lost way of life and/or building construction)

These typologies have been listed following the Annual Conference Demhist which took place in Vienna in 2007. Rosanna Pavoni has added two new typologies in the pdf to help define more accurately the true identity of each house museum :

- Period rooms (a house museum that contains rooms inspired to styles of various periods)
- Houses for Museums (a house that becomes a venue for different collections not related to its history)

House Museums - The first phase of the Categorization Project Demhist. The results