History An exhibition shows what cannot actually be shown
There are objects that are difficult or impossible to exhibit in a museum. The Museum für Gestaltung Zürich is now showing how digitalization and artificial intelligence can change this in the future in its new anniversary exhibition "Museum of the Future".
29.08.2025, 09:30
SDA
The Museum für Gestaltung Zürich has been around for 150 years. To mark its anniversary, its new exhibition looks to the future and uses 17 interactive experiments to illustrate how new technologies can provide access to museum exhibits that would otherwise not be on display.
The challenge for many museums is that the objects are "too large, too fragile" or "not accessible for conservation reasons", as the museum writes in a press release.
Artificial intelligence is also part of the exhibition "Museum of the Future - 17 digital experiments". In the first part of the exhibition, for example, it deciphers charred scrolls from the ancient city of Herculaneum. Or it makes letters from the Swiss reformer Heinrich Bullinger visible.
World's largest digital image
The exhibition is particularly likely to stimulate discussion about digital reconstruction. A highlight of the show is the digital copy of the panorama of the Battle of Murten. The oil painting from the 19th century has only been exhibited a few times and for the last time at Expo.02 and is known for its gigantic depiction of the medieval battle: the original circular painting by the German painter Louis Braun is 100 meters long and 10 meters high.
The copy, which according to the press release has 1.6 trillion pixels, is currently the largest digital image in the world. It was created by the Laboratory for Experimental Museology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. Visitors can use a joystick to scroll and zoom through the high-resolution image, allowing them to see the smallest details down to the brushstroke.
In response to the question of whether museum exhibits will one day be obsolete due to digitization, curator and museum director Christian Brändle wrote: "There is no substitute for an original. But thanks to digital means, it can be made tangible in a versatile and playful way, thus enticing the public to engage with it in a multidimensional way."
The exhibition, which runs from Friday until the beginning of February, also plays with scale and makes the invisible accessible with digital support. These include a never-realized building by the architect and artist Le Corbusier and insect details that would not be visible to the naked eye.
