New co-management for "Simply Zurich
Maria Tschudi Bebié and Michèle Wannaz have been appointed co-directors of the Einfach Zürich association, which works in cooperation with the Swiss National Museum to promote the cultural history of the city and the canton.
The basis for this is the permanent exhibition "Simply Zurich" in the National Museum - opened at the beginning of 2019 and conceived by Holzer Kobler Architekturen together with Expo.02 maker Martin Heller, in close collaboration with Maria Tschudi Bebié. The exhibition continues to meet with great interest and is able to inspire. The Tages-Anzeiger, for example, speaks of "veritable deep drilling": "You've never seen Zurich like this before. You should definitely see Zurich like this. The Züri-Tipp also enjoyed the "overwhelming spatial experience" in which "one experiences the city in a completely new way," and the Tagesschau predicted a "crowd puller.
The fact that the exhibition is not finished has a concept: Just as history constantly updates itself, so will the exhibition - curated by Wannaz and Tschudi Bebié. The next update is planned for spring 2023.
In addition, "Simply Zurich" was conceived from the outset as a participatory project: since fall 2019, the exhibition has been flanked by a broad supporting program that links various partners in the city and canton and launches new cultural history activities. The former program director Walter Bersorger, who will be joined by Maria Tschudi Bebié from spring 2021, has done a valuable job in setting up the program. Due to the pandemic, however, their previous range of events could only be utilized to a very limited extent. "We are pleased," says Tschudi Bebié, "that more is now possible again. And of course we hope with all our hearts that it will stay that way."
It is important to the new co-leaders to address different target groups. In the future, there will be more offerings for children and young people. And there will also be a wide range of content: "From the development of our forms of housing to the history of banks, psychiatry or prostitution to family memory in the sense of the German sociology study 'Grandpa wasn't a Nazi', a lot is possible," says Michèle Wannaz, "whereby the relevance of the topics for today is always a central criterion.
The two co-leaders want to focus on a wide variety of formats that make history tangible and allow the senses to experience it. The goal is to make the brand "Simply Zurich" even more visible and to establish it as an organizer with its own signature.
The advantage of this is that Wannaz and Tschudi complement each other ideally. The latter is a cultural manager through and through: After training as a culture and marketing manager, she assisted Martin Heller for 17 years in the realization of exhibitions in Switzerland and abroad, as well as major projects such as the celebrations for the 500th anniversary of the Zurich Reformation or "Linz - European Capital of Culture" with over 3.4 million visitors. Michèle Wannaz, on the other hand, comes more from the content and conceptual side: after studying journalism, film studies and literature, and starting out in journalism - for the NZZ, Tages-Anzeiger and WOZ, among others - she helped conceive a historical arte documentary series, curated exhibitions for the Vögele Kultur Zentrum, worked as a feature film dramaturge for Xavier Koller, among others.She has worked as a feature film dramaturg for Xavier Koller, Markus Imhoof and Pipilotti Rist, among others, and has produced documentaries and animated films with her own company Cinéma Copain, the last of which qualified for the Oscar longlist in 2021 after winning numerous prestigious awards.
What Wannaz and Tschudi Bebié have in common is that they want to convey cultural history in a low-threshold, fun and playful way: "You should realize that it has something to do with all of us. That we wouldn't be who we are without it." At the same time, the past should always be linked to today and tomorrow: "Where are we aiming and why? Why do we see certain paths but are blind to others? How does cultural history shape our perception and keep us trapped in patterns that perhaps should have been broken long ago?"
In addition to collaborating with local actors, the project also aims to collaborate with renowned exponents from the worlds of film, theater, and art who have a connection to Zurich and deal with history in an inspiring way.
About the history of "Simply Zurich
Although the canton has numerous institutions that convey cultural history, for a long time there was no place that could present this knowledge in a bundled form and make it accessible to a broad public: The city and canton of Zurich do not have a central museum of their own - partly because Zurich's cultural history holdings were integrated into the Landesmuseum's collections when it was founded in 1898. The long-discussed idea of a "Zürich Museum" materialized in 2008 in a concept commissioned by the city of Zürich and in the launch of the project in 2011: the expansion of the Landesmuseum offered the spatial opportunity to implement an exhibition on the history of the city and canton of Zürich in the museum itself. In 2019, the permanent exhibition "Simply Zurich" opened, which is regularly expanded and accompanied by a rich program of events. The sponsors are the city, the canton and the National Museum.
