Bern Museum of Communication reinvents itself
Starting next August, the Museum of Communication plans to completely revamp its aging permanent exhibitions. Some long-standing favorites will be removed.
The previous three permanent exhibitions will give way to a single exhibition. This will extend over three floors of the museum. One floor will be set up for temporary exhibitions.
The new permanent exhibition is to be larger and more interactive, as project manager Christoph Rohner explained to the media on Wednesday. While the previous permanent exhibitions were structured chronologically, the new exhibition will be more thematically structured and more accessible.
The current permanent exhibitions will be on display until mid-August - after that, there will be a year of renovations. During this time, the museum will not present any major exhibitions. However, it will be present with various offers, such as a city tour on the topic of communication and guided tours in the museum depot in Schwarzenburg. On August 19, 2017, the new permanent exhibition will then be opened on an area of around 2,000 square meters.
Reinvented again and again
The museum has reinvented itself again and again over the decades. Thus, it has changed its name and location several times. The institution was founded in 1907 as a museum of the PTT (Post, Telephone Telegraph). In 1990, the institution moved into its own building at Helvetiaplatz, close to other major museums in Bern. Since 1997, the building has been called the Museum of Communication. The current permanent exhibitions date from 2003 and 2007 and are now showing their age, says museum director Jacqueline Strauss.
