The client, a public institution in the Austrian region, Styria, needed a fresh concept for the History Museum’s exhibitions and its entrance, housed within a significant historic building at Graz’s city center. The task was to present an enormous number of objects acquired since the Middle Ages and multimedia archives of the 20th century in an historic space that required careful treatment.
The concept is based on a journey through “Schaudepot,” an exhibition depot, divided into two parts – the Cultural History Collection and the Multimedia Collection. The first section presents the diversity of physical objects that reflects the use of industrial material with less customization while providing multifunctional and freely adaptable displays for various shapes and sizes allowing visitors to experience the historic space from an unexpected seamless perspective. The second part showcases multimedia archives enabling deep insights into the dispersed depot character with tailored scenography which leads through its genesis. The exhibition, “100 x Steiermark” placed in the outstanding historic mirror hall, articulates spatial intervention in both functional and artistic ways. Relating to the concept of a “laid table of history,” the furniture-like installations made of glass or mirror reflect the historic use of these chambers. The space, furniture, objects, and visitors merge into one another as one medium and raise questions: “What is forthcoming? What remains?”