Frank Atkinson, who has died aged 90, was an inspirational museum director who held firmly to the belief that a museum’s collection should not be limited by the size of its doors. Shortly after the launch of his brainchild, Beamish, billed as “the living museum of the north”, in County Durham, in 1971, he took delivery of Rowley railway station, lock, stock and barrel. This was followed by a tram track, a drift mine, a Co-op store, East Stanley board school, Eston’s medieval church, terraced housing, a fairground carousel, flocks and herds of local sheep and cattle and much else.
Beamish, which pioneered the idea of a “living museum”, set an immediate record on its opening day by attracting a two-hour queue. It has since ratcheted up awards including European Museum of the Year in 1987, the year Atkinson officially retired after an operation to remove a cancerous lung. His support and, crucially, his ethos continued unabated, and recent developments at Beamish have included the reconstruction of an original coal-fired fish and chip shop and a bakery.
From the start Beamish adopted Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg motto, “of the people, by the people, for the people”, which was consistent with Atkinson’s own background. He was born in Barnsley, the older son of Ernest, a plumber, and Elfrida (nee Bedford), an infant school teacher, both of whom improved their lot, his father by building and letting a small number of houses, his mother by becoming a headteacher. Although uninspired by Barnsley grammar school, Atkinson was an eager learner. He was rapaciously curious, taking up fossil collecting at the age of 10 and becoming the youngest member of the town’s naturalist and scientific society.
By the age of 16 Atkinson had decided on a museum career, but after taking a science degree at Sheffield and doing wartime service he worked initially at a coking plant. He spent weekends volunteering for Wakefield Museum and Art Gallery, where he eventually got a job as an assistant, and worked his way up to director.
The seeds of Beamish were sown in 1952, when he toured Norway and Sweden and witnessed the success of “folk museums” such as Stockholm’s Skansen, dedicated to preserving traditional rural culture, which was founded in 1891. Atkinson decided England should have a similar museum.
He prospered first, however, in the traditional museum world, directing three museums in Halifax – Belle Vue, Shibden Hall and Bankfield Museum – before becoming curator of the Bowes Museum in 1958. This astonishing leviathan, a 19th-century French chateau soaring out of the County Durham countryside, combined an outstanding French and Spanish fine art collection with substantial storage space. It was here that Atkinson first made his case for an open-air museum, and with a small team began assembling a collection of artefacts representing the recent social history of the area.
Seed drills and pit trucks arrived to join such exquisite works as Bowes’s 18th-century silver swan automaton, and although unlikely sounding partners, they shared a precious asset: the public loved them. Duplicates or replaceable items were put on show to be used and handled, an early example of today’s ubiquitous hands-on museums.
As the collection outgrew the attics at Bowes, Atkinson took over an empty tank depot. In 1966, a working party was established with the aim of setting up an open-air museum “for the purpose of studying, collecting, preserving and exhibiting buildings, machinery, objects and information illustrating the development of industry and the way of life of the north of England”. Beamish Hall, with its farmyard buildings and administrative offices recently vacated by the National Coal Board, was soon identified as a suitable location, and Atkinson became director of Beamish in 1970.
His flair for innovation was complemented by managerial skill and an easy, enthusiastic manner, which worked powerfully in the media. Not a credit-seeker, he nonetheless became the figurehead for Beamish through the quality of his interviews and broadcasts. He retained his boyish curiosity, attending evening classes on computing in its early days, after asking an engineering friend what use the unfamiliar gadgets had and being told that they might improve the management of Newcastle upon Tyne’s traffic lights. In fact, his own programming ensured far-sighted systems at Beamish, including early monitoring of visitors’ origins and views of their day out.
Atkinson was a devoted family man, marrying Joan Pierson in 1953, after she was appointed a junior assistant to Halifax’s museum service. The couple settled with their three sons in Ovingham, Northumberland, where he worked after retirement with the Thomas Bewick Birthplace Trust and as a member of the national Museums and Galleries Commission, since disbanded. He was awarded the CBE in 1995 and was an honorary doctor of civil law at Durham University.
He wrote enthusiastically on subjects as varied as his collections, from the history of nail-making to descriptions of potholes investigated while caving, one of his main interests outside work and family.
He is survived by Joan, their three sons and five grandchildren.
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