moving museum

Barbara Staudinger

Interventions, mediation program

moving museum infiltrates the exhibitions of various cultural-historic museums and gets things moving within the official order (of knowledge): Objects abandon their locations, texts change perspective and tell a different history. moving museum brings out that which has been forgotten into the open and challenges the museum's monopoly of interpretation with regard to history (of migrants).

What do the Ottoman weapons in the Museum of Vienna have to tell us beyond the Turkish besiegement of 1683? Which story(ies) does a silver Torah adornment from Eastern Europe have to tell in the Jewish Museum of Vienna? And what piece of history do the images of gods describe that are being presented in the Weltmuseum Wien?

During WIENWOCHE, moving museum  is going to sneak into the permanent exhibitions of these three cultural-historical museums. For example, without any pre-warning, objects change their location or altered object descriptions appear. By simple means, the project intervenes in the formal order (of knowledge) of museums.

moving museum brings the topic of migration into museums in a playful and artistic way. It changes the view of objects on display and thereby the narrative of the exhibition itself. In the process, forgotten or suppressed stories are brought to the foreground. They speak of voluntary or involuntary migration, of the migration of people and objects, of migration as a success story or a story of failure. Last but not least, the interventions focus on traditional representations of "we" and "others" in the museum context, and question these.

moving museum does not define any new historical truth, but counters the monopoly the "museum" institution holds in interpreting (migrant) history with multifaceted perspectives of the past and thereby, the present along with it. The interventions are taking place at the same time in the Jewish Museum Vienna, the Weltmuseum Wien and the Wien Museum. They can be experienced or explored on your own or by taking a tour.

In cooperation with the Jewish Museum Vienna, the Weltmuseum Wien and the Wien Museum.