Museum Centre Vapriikki Tampere is one of the largest and the most popular museums in Finland with its 13 000 square meters of museum space and over 140 000 annual visitors. Vapriikki has gone through major renovations during the last five years. All the permanent exhibitions have been totally renewed and at the same time the concept of permanent exhibitions has been radically changed.
The future development of the Museum Centre Vapriikki has now started. It includes the coming of the three special museums (National Postal Museum, Mineral Museum and Mediamuseum Rupriikki) under the roof of Vapriikki from 2014 onwards.
In my presentation I will focus on the ideas, concepts, dramaturgy and implementation of the new exhibition design in four different exhibitions in Vapriikki. Tampere 1918 exhibition on the Finnish Civil War was the first of the major renovation projects of the permanent displays in Vapriikki. This project was followed by the exhibitions “City of Tammerkoski Rapids” (2009) and “Innovations” (2008−2012). All of these exhibitions are shedding their light on special themes related to the history and contemporary life in Tampere and all of these permanent exhibitions were made with different museological ideas and approaches. I will elaborate these aspects more deeply and concentrate first on the European Museum of the Year special commendation awarded Tampere 1918 exhibition, and discuss how to create strong emotional feelings in the exhibition. I will then go more into detail to the other exhibitions with some international comparison and reveal some secrets and new perspectives of my current project: creating the permanent and temporary exhibitions of the Finnish Postal Museum to be opened in September 2014.
I will be mainly looking at the changes in the exhibition design through three aspects: 1) Storytelling and the sharing of information 2) Experiences 3) Participatory aspects. Moreover I will present some viewpoints on the use of technology and on the physical and digital interfaces in the exhibitions.
