Exhibition
The Lost Museum is a pop up museum that is touring various parts of the world in different forms and formats. While the exhibitions are unique, the concept is always the same: to break established boundaries and categories, and to display art, historical documentation, everyday objects and curiosities side by side, challenging the idea of what a museum can or should be.
In Oslo, this project is entitled The Lost Museum – Department of Humans. The exhibition is composed of objects from different archives and museum collections from all over Norway, and explores the way in which Northern European culture has defined and redefined what it means to be a human being.
Artworks by Theodor Kittelsen, photographs of paranormal and psychic phenomena, masks, and medical equipment are displayed next to children’s toys, documents from the German occupation, and pictures illustrating rituals from earlier times. Traditionally, each object was once part of a separate history. They have been classified as art, historical or anthropological documents, cultural heritage, psychology, or medical research. However, once these objects are exhibited together, they generate new possibilities.
The Lost Museum – Department of Humans is suspended in the crossroads between fantasy and fact, reality and magic, beauty and hideousness. In a modern world, dominated by the struggle to achieve progress, efficiency and individuality, it seems that human phenomena, beliefs and experiences are often set aside. By calling attention to these overlooked human experiences, The Lost Museum offers a new way of understanding our culture. What happens when something that does not conform to rational modernity is lifted out of the archives?
The Lost Museum searches for disparities in expert agreements on the direction of art and science, life and society. In The Lost Museum – Department of Humans, the public can expect the unexpected – and look forward to an untraditional museum experience, and an alternative history of Norway.
