22.11.2024

Into the Future with Gutenberg: New interim exhibition for the Gutenberg Museum

The Gutenberg Museum is moving. The new interim exhibition designed by ATELIER BRÜCKNER places Gutenberg, the person and his legacy, in relation to our media life today. Typefaces and typography are also the dominant themes in the scenography and the graphic concept. In the coming years, the new Gutenberg Museum will be built near Mainz Cathedral. Until then, the interim exhibition GUTENBERG MUSEUM MOVED in the former convent of St Clare will show selected objects from the collection – including the famous Gutenberg Bibles. ATELIER BRÜCKNER was responsible for the exhibition design, graphic design and media design. 

Gutenberg – a name that stands for one of the most ground-breaking inventions in the history of mankind: printing with movable type. Until the middle of the 15th century, the reproduction of texts was laborious and costly, as everything was copied by hand. But Gutenberg's technology ushered in a new era: knowledge and texts became accessible to many people. The new exhibition shows important objects from the collection and makes it clear that Gutenberg was an ingenious media person whose achievements still influence us today.

The presentation is divided into three parts: On the ground floor is the main exhibition with the Gutenberg Bibles, on the first and second floors are the workshops for printing demonstration, a cinema and a printing shop.

The exhibition opens with the question “Who was Gutenberg, where did he live?” in the Prologue. In an audiovisual projection, visitors learn about life in Mainz around 1450 from a narrator in the form of a ‘blank page’.

Following the prologue are six thematic blocks: ‘image cultivation’, ‘shaping opinions’, ‘displaying splendour’, ‘describing the world’, ‘creating knowledge’ and ‘passing time’, outstanding historical media objects from the collection are linked with contemporary media objects. It becomes clear how Gutenberg's invention changed the world, made education possible for everyone and still influences us today. After all, many of today's media phenomena already existed in Gutenberg's time. One example of this is the ‘image cultivation’ section which deals with self-presentation and self-staging: this already existed in 1572, when Charles II Francis of Austria staged himself for a wedding picture with Anna Maria of Bavaria. The reference to today's media world is made clear in each thematic block by a logo: Instagram stands for today's image cultivation like nothing else. The exhibits in the collection are presented in a display case in front of the floor-to-ceiling backlit pictures and on a large central table, where they are thematically arranged and placed in context. The room is characterized by bright and white tones. The exhibition design distinctly contrasts with the sacred surroundings; the furniture is freestanding, deliberately independent of the architecture of the listed building.

The interactive level of the exhibition also deals with depiction and reproduction: visitors receive a media card with an integrated FSC chip with their ticket, which they can use to call up information at media stations. The card also serves as a canvas for a printed portrait. At a selfie station, visitors can take a photo of themselves, which will be printed on the card at the end of the exhibition in a linocut aesthetic. 

The Gutenberg Bibles are the highlight of the exhibition. Only 49 of the 180 printed Bibles have survived, two of which are owned by the museum. The Gutenberg Bible is the first book of this size to be printed with movable type and is also Gutenberg's magnum opus. The main exhibits are given their own room: the treasure chamber. This has been designed as an atmospheric, dark cube that stands out distinctively in the building itself and in the interior design. In the walk-in cube, two bibles from Gutenbergs workshop are displayed: the Shuckburgh Bible and the Solms-Laubach Bible, both from around 1454.

The staircase is also part of the exhibition scenography, where illustrator Jörn Kaspuhl tells the story of the Gutenberg Museum. Important milestones, such as the arrival of the Gutenberg Bibles at Frankfurt Airport in 1978 or the visit of George W. Bush in 1994, are illustrated here. 

The graphic concept of the exhibition takes up the design guidelines of the Gutenberg Bible: strict justification, black lettering, red as a spot colour. Two fonts from the museum's type collection are selected as exhibition typefaces: Caslon, originally from 1722, is used as the labelling font, while Folio, a classic grotesque font from 1957, is used for the body text. The use of initials, a large, decorative letter at the beginning of a paragraph, is also taken from the book design of the time and the Bible style. What is special is that this initial is always set in a different font, and thus shows different fonts from the Gutenberg Museum's diverse font collection throughout the exhibition.

The Gutenberg Museum shares the building with the Natural History Museum. ATELIER BRÜCKNER has developed a new façade design and a new signage system to visualise and separate the two institutions. Even before the entrance, the façade design clearly indicates that the Gutenberg Museum is in the left-hand part of the building and the Natural History Museum in the right-hand side. The façade of the Gutenberg Museum is decorated with the letters G and M in different fonts. In the signage system, a graphic band with different Gs from the typeface collection representing Gutenberg, guides visitors to the exhibition rooms. The façade design and the signage system of the newly erected pavilion in the outdoor area are also part of the exhibition scenography.