What’s the Story

This design for a permanent exhibition at the Amsterdam’s Tropical Museum, relays to visitors the story of Dutch colonial history, its own collection, and the architecture of the museum’s building–which is one of the largest in the Netherlands. The redesign of the exhibition coincided with a growing need to reconsider the approach the museum took toward its presentation of this subject matter, in line with increasing alertness in society around such issues. This stemmed from the civil-social movements centered on injustice in the West at the end of the 2010s. The museum’s displayed as a model in the exhibition, where it is also the center point. The entire permanent collection is enclosed by a timeline of infographics on three walls. The first concerns the history of the museum; the second wall questions roles of museums in society today; and the last highlights important works culled from the collection, and their background stories. The infographics were designed as a landscape, with some on the display cases and a horizon for the model of the museum.

Year	2019
Client	Het Tropenmuseum
Location	Amsterdam, NL