PRESS RELEASE
31.05.2022
Forum Wissen – Göttingen
A Museum that creates Knowledge
Göttingen University's Forum Wissen will be opening its doors to the public from 4 June. Original objects from every university collection are now housed under one roof in the former Natural History Museum, which was built in 1877. ATELIER BRÜCKNER has designed the innovative exhibition concept in a space of 1,400 square metres: The focus is on "creating knowledge" – and on academic research. Processes and practices of academic work become tangible in space. The visitors get immersed via artistically styled room narratives and become creators of knowledge themselves. Stephan Weil, Minister President of Lower Saxony, will speak at the opening ceremony on 31 May. The ceremony will be streamed live at www.forum-wissen.de.
Forum Wissen does more than just convey academic research methods and practices – it participates in the creation of knowledge itself. An app, that can be used on visitors' own smartphones or a rented device, takes them on a tour across the two floors and 17 exhibition rooms of the museum. With the app, visitors explore the collection and become researchers themselves. They collect objects virtually and can explore them at methodology tables.
On the ground floor this concept is presented in the “Connections” space. This is where visitors experience how knowledge travels by sending their collected objects on a digital journey. They follow an object for example from the site it was excavated via trade routes to the University collection, which in turn lend it out to other institutions.
Introduction and overview
At the ground floor of the Forum Wissen it is all about introducing visitors to its concept and offering an overview: The "Collection Showcase" introduces them to the more than 40 diverse university collections – from Astrophysics and Egyptology to Geosciences and Zoology. The large walk-in showcase, featuring a rotating display of objects, has a room at its centre for study purposes. Here, members of the university can hold seminars as well as meetings.
In the "Practices” room the process of creating knowledge, which will be experienced room-by-room on the upper floor, is illustrated by an artistic film collage. The adjacent "Open Space” is used for changing content. Accordingly, each room on the upper floor has one empty showcase. It is constantly being re-equipped to foster new dialogues.
Nothing like a change of perspective
The "Perspectives” room is the first exhibition space that visitors to Forum Wissen enter. It invites people to change their perspective. The exhibition includes plaster busts of famous scientists, as well as enigmatic portraits such as animal masks and children's heads. By moving around the exhibits and shifting their point of view, visitors encounter different views and descriptions.
The “Salon” room on the upper floor of the building reflects the motif of a change of perspective. It is a central room within the visitor routing. Created in collaboration with the artists' collective Rimini Protokoll, it invites visitors to experience and understand the culture of debate. Each of the hanging bubble chairs is assigned a viewpoint in a particular debate. Visitors take a seat in the bubble and are challenged to represent and defend the recorded opinion in front of the other Salon visitors. If they want to change their point of view, they have to leave their bubble and move to another sphere. They can only change their point of view by moving around. Historical debates on topics like rearmament in the young Federal Republic of Germany and animal testing are depicted on the walls of the Salon. They bridge the gap between historic and current debates.
Immersive spatial narratives
Every spatial narrative of the twelve areas of knowledge on the upper floor of the museum immerses visitors intuitively in individual worlds of research and experience. They stimulate visitors to discover scientific methods: Visitors encounter a Laboratory, a Workshop and, inevitably, the Blind Alley. They can experience the core disciplines and practices of scientific research and teaching – such as field research, transfer of knowledge in the Lecture Hall and the principles of organizing and creating "scientific" order. This is the subject of the "Cabinets" room.
This room is densely packed with furniture used for archival purposes, which is also arranged according to principles of order such as size and weight. The room is dominated by cabinets for files, drawings, minerals, coins and other precious objects, as well as chests and display cabinets with drawers. Some of them are open, sparking curiosity about their contents and revealing the information they contain.
From the perspective of a mouse, visitors explore the Desk room. The notepad, stack of books, desk lamp and notebook are ten times larger than in reality. This room is all about comprehension and description – a huge task.
The "Marketplace" room is dedicated to assessing the worth of scientific achievements or original objects. Visitors enter a kind of trade fair stand where they can exchange the objects they have collected in their app and classify them according to their financial, sentimental or aesthetic value. They ask the question "What is the value of the objects in the collection? What is the value of academic research?"
The book tower and the issue of classification
The last room of the tour is called “The Library”, which is designed as a huge, circular walk-in tower of hundreds of books. Integrated Benches inside invite visitors to linger. The library is a collection of ordered, prepared knowledge. It ranges from encyclopaedias, history volumes and travel guides, as well as the picaresque novel "Till Eulenspiegel", to mundane advice on burning fat. A media wall gives visitors access to the digital archive of the university's collections. Here they can integrate their individually collected knowledge into a larger context. The science is prolonged and continually evolves by the input of visitor’s information back into the university’s database.
Historical background: The collections of the University of Göttingen
The collections of the University of Göttingen were established over a period of almost 300 years and are now dispersed throughout the city in institutes and archives. In the "Königlich Academisches Museum" (Royal Academic Museum) at Papendiek, which opened in 1773 as an institution of the University, naturalia and artificalia were collected for research and teaching purposes while a library was being established at the same time. Even back then, the collections were accessible to interested members of the public. As a result of the constant expansion and the development of further collections, the Academisches Museum soon proved to be too small. In 1877, the Natural History Museum was built on Berliner Straße in the immediate vicinity of the railway station. Most recently, it housed the Zoological Museum and the Zoological Institute. Following extensive renovation, the historic building is now used for the Forum Wissen to promote the concept of knowledge transfer. It's all about the methods. How do I impart knowledge? And how can I acquire knowledge?
ATELIER BRÜCKNER is one of the world’s leading exhibition designers. With offices in Stuttgart and Seoul, the agency that was founded 25 years ago is led by Shirin Brückner, Prof. Eberhard Schlag, Britta Nagel and René Walkenhorst. 120 employees contribute to the development of narrative spaces for museums, brand and visitor centres. The focus is on emotionally conveying content in a long-lasting experience.
INFORMATION
You can find photographs (jpg_300 dpi) and floor plans at the link below:
https://www.atelier-brueckner.com/en/forum-wissen
Address
Forum Wissen
Berliner Strasse 28
37073 Göttingen | Germany
T. +49 551 392 66 00
willkommen(at)forum-wissen.de
www.forum-wissen.de
Opening hours
From 4 June 2022: Thursday to Sunday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
