Category: Halle

Living Skeletons - Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte, Halle

4/10/2019

Another wonderful trick of display at Halle's State Museum of Prehistory (Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte) are the fossilized skeletons displays in poses and places as if they were alive. A mammoth (above) crashes through the wall into the room housing his bones on a light table. A prehistoric mammal climbs a display case (below left) like a monkey up a tree, while some early elk (below right) soar through the air into the light well. A large grazing animal (bottom) stands chest-deep in dry savannah grass. (The striking display of axe heads in the background featured in the last post.) It is not only much more fun to look at these "living" animals, but educational—for the movement is part of the animal! When reindeer fly...

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A Galaxy of Axe Heads - Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte, Halle

4/10/2019

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Halle's State Museum of Prehistory (Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte) has impressive pieces and ways to display them. The display of Bronze-Age axe heads (above and right) is a dazzling way to emphasize how ubiquitous these tools were: they were the tool of their day, essential to some of the most basic life functions. Precious and finely worked, yet so necessary as to be owned not only by the elite. (The smart phones of their day?) I found the display not only visually pleasing but a good teaching moment for precisely that reason.

The juxtaposition of the axe heads with plaster faces in a modern art piece was also arresting!

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Stony Looks — Kunstmuseum Moritzburg

3/15/2019

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Last weekend I had the chance to visit Halle for the first time. Among the museal delights is the Kunstmuseum Moritzburg, housing a collection of 20th-century painting inside a genuine castle (right). Built in the 15th century and modified numerous times thereafter, the castle is an architectural palimpsest. And, as you can imagine, the thick stone walls hardly lend themselves to rotating exhibitions of painting; just try driving a nail into those things, let alone more than one, let alone the wrath of the heritage bureau!

This is where cunning display tactics come in handy. The museum erected a series of freestanding interior walls to serve the needs of art display within the architectural shell (and constraints) of the castle. Many of the walls even have lighting rigged along the top, providing closer and more dirigible light than anything hung from the mile-high ceiling could:

Of course, the castle offers far more than just limitations. Its passages allow you to peer in ways you usually can't in a museum building (right). And its rugged masonry forms a sensory contrast to the finely milled, sleek, shiny objects in gold frames and glass cases (below). A display of Bauhaus-era glass vessels stands out with gleaming, brilliant colors that look even more luminous against the stony backdrop. A diamond in the rough!

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Living Skeletons - Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte, Halle

A Galaxy of Axe Heads - Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte, Halle

Stony Looks — Kunstmuseum Moritzburg

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