The idea of establishing a museum for Henrik Ibsen started with Suzannah Ibsen's death in 1914 and was taken up again several times with different goals and reasons during the next eighty years. In 1964, Minister of Education and Church Affairs, Helge Sivertsen, responded to an inquiry about the poet’s home in Arbins gate, that in his opinion it ought to be the art and not the artist that should be exhibited.
In the museum world, the urge to get hold of objects from everyday life and place them in display cases is referred to as a mania. But how can literary museums avoid becoming “pedestal culture” and rather take care of the playwright and his artistic creations?