Exhibition
The Organ

Our design approach is borrow­ed from the character­istics of an organ. For example, the main part of the instrument is norma­lly invisible to listeners, which gave us the impetus for a zig­zagging timeline. This calms the entrance scene because the text­ual plane is revealed only when the audience enters the room. The verti­cality and variance of the pipes inspired our choice of typeface: "Pressio" is a strongly vertical type­face that is used in various condensed weights through­out the exhibition. All exhibi­tion elements make use of a royal blue color palette, befitting the queen of instruments. Some­times warm and elegant, some­times in bright­ly active tones, depending on the desired spatial effect and form of use.

The basis of the new ex­hi­bition is, one, the instrument collec­tion the Saxon Organ Academy donated to the castle, and two, the struc­turally integrated organ of the castle chapel, whose gigan­tic pipe apparatus and bellows can be seen from behind in one of the exhibi­tion rooms. After examining and eva­lua­ting the collection, we put together a selection of meaning­ful objects for the new ex­hibi­tion. In concrete terms, this meant that we restaged instruments and instrument parts and embedded them drama­turgically; we revised existing models in terms of design and pedagogy. We supple­mented the whole thing with exhibition texts, images, info­graphics, and a new playable Jehmlich organ.

Haptics, optics, acoustics – instru­ments are a sensual plea­sure! In the case of the organ, however, also a compli­cated one. That's why it takes more than frontal teach­ing and long instructional texts to under­stand how it works. And because theory becomes more tangible and exciting through varied, inter­active appli­cations, we have al­ready emphasized multi­sen­sory and inter­ac­tivity in the cur­atorial concept. Visitors read, listen, look, press, strum, produce sounds, operate bellows and strike keys. The (interactive) centerpiece is the newly built functional model of an organ (a master­piece of the tra­ditional Saxon work­shop Jehmlich). In add­ition, we have incorporated in­struments and models from the collection with interactive functions. 

Although we had already planned the content of the entire ex­hibition space (200 square meters) in the cura­torial concept, it then turned out that the rooms could not be fully re­novated until 2022 due to funding re­gula­tions. To prevent there from being nothing to see until then, the ex­hibition is being implemen­ted (and opened) in two stages, the first of which we are now pre­senting – an interim exhibition of six of the total of eight partially reno­vated rooms. For the design, this meant that all exhibition elements had to be reversible or resto­rable at a low cost, without the overall effect losing quality. Wood­chip wall­paper and unchange­able power connec­tions were just two of the many challenges for which we found flexible, cre­ative solutions. 

Even if the organ ex­hibi­tion is not yet complete, its first part is a well-rounded object that is worth seeing and of which we are in­cre­dibly proud. Not least because we dared something new with our first, own curation – and promptly fell in love anew! The project and the people we met along the journey touched and enriched us through their incredible knowledge, in­spiring vision, and their absolute dedi­cation to an instru­ment that we now too see with com­pletely different eyes.