Kongospor, Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo

Designer: Elisabeth Hatz
Visited July 2007

Method:
The exhibition starts on the repos on top of the staircase. A large black wall points in the direction of the exhibition, and gives us a map of Kongo and its position geographically in Africa.

Inside the first room there are showcases along the walls, on one side mainly large b/w pictures in hooks on the wall flanked by a smaller showcase containing objects. Each hook has a headline. On the other wall there are mainly showcases with lit texpanels.

At the far end of the room there is a large round ball onto which film of a street scene is projected. The giant round ball makes for a pleasant place to rest your eyes. It's always fun looking at people and traffic moving through their day.

There is also film projected on the wall above the showcases. Interesting clips, loops being quite long, which means there is always something new to see, but if you want to show something to your companion you will have to wait a long time.

The second room has text panels and glass showcases. On one of the text panels there are reproductions of the cataloguing cards used to register the objects. This is a nice touch bringing the backstage work of the museums into the galleries. There is also an modern artwork presented on one wall.

Narrative:
The first room is divided into topics like "On the river" and "Adventure and discovery".
The theme of the second room seems unrelated to the first, maybe they are not related at all? The topic in this room is the way the "west", or the colonizers, have looked at African art and traditional objects. The discussion is very interesting and a huge step in the right direction in problematizing this relationship.

Design:
In the first room everything is painted black. Why? Because of the dark history of the subject? Because Kongo is in "blackest Africa"? To lift the objects out as objects of beauty and significance? The light is cold, mainly neon lights, and even the bright red carpet can not warm the room significantly. Do the designers feel that the relationship between Kongo and Scandinavia is a cold and dark one?

The second room has white walls and glass showcases. The discussions in the room are important and fresh, but the design echoes the classic art gallery. On purpose? Is it a conscious choice in order to problematize the way "western" eyes have looked at these objects throughout recent history?

Kystmuseet i Øygarden, Hordaland, Norway

Visited october 16, 2006
I like that the exhibition is so rich with objects, every space is filled. It is nicely clustered, and decently lit. Unfortunately it has five life-size mannequins placed about the exhibition helping support the notion that life in Øygarden used to be intolerable (for more on this see my text on puppets in exhibitions Obs! External link!).

It looks to me as if the exhibition is chronological. A text panel tells me it is based on the use of the natural resources of the area, the four elements. This might not be the most exciting way of organizing the information in our day and time. I find I have a preference for thematicly organized exhibitions. (This could probably be made into its own entry om thematic vs. chronological stories...)

Basically it is a lot of objects and I find it hard to relate to any of them, there is no interpretation of the objects; eg how they are made, how they were used etc.

Text
The text panels are way too many and way too long. Supposedly there are two levels of information, but I see at least three, the third being the printed labels describing objects.

Trying to read any of the three levels of information I fall asleep before the first paragraf is over. The language is heavy and complicated.

Conclusion
All in all I get the impression that this is a well made, if somewhat old-fashioned and quite boring exhibition. Its storytelling seems rooted in the philosophy of the 1970ies.