Special exhibition
Client:
Five Continents Museum, Munich
DIMENSION: 500 m2
Completion: 2014
Gray Giants - How elephants have shaped human life
Ethnological Museum within the Oettingen Royal Palace
Wisdom, intelligence and strength – wherever humans have come into contact with elephants, they have ascribed these attributes to them and by the same token used those very qualities to bask in their reflected glory. There is no better example of this than in the figure of “Ganesha” – the Hindu deity with the human body and the elephant head.
Why do elephants fascinate us so much? Why are they still hunted to this day, in spite of that fascination? And in what ways has the elephant shaped human culture on various continents? The exhibition we created for the Ethnological Museum within the Oettingen Royal Palace explores these very questions. In keeping with the oversized dimensions of the subject matter, we opted to create densely-packed spatial impressions on a grand scale. For instance, in the opening room of the exhibition, “Elephant Domination”, visitors come face to face with a life-sized bull elephant, wander along a 30-metre-long hall amongst the moving shadows of an elephant herd or find themselves suddenly in the midst of a hunting scene, audibly evoked by wild drumming and the ear-splitting sound of a trumpeting elephant. Content is conveyed for the most part by the classic method of text and graphics on display boards, which allow visitors to augment their sensory impressions with detailed and attractively presented information. The comments left by visitors in the elephant tree visitors’ book in the museum foyer confirm the effectiveness of the concept: fantastic experience – message received!
