Digital Initiative during Vitra Design Museum’s Temporary Closure

The #vitradesignmuseum is intensifying its online presence to make up for its temporary closure during the Corona crisis. Video tours will enable visitors to view the current exhibitions while short films and our extensive online catalogue provide an informative visual experience of our collection. By posting themed series on Instagram and Facebook, the museum will relate the current situation to such contexts as the history of working at home or #design in times of crisis. The current exhibition »Home Stories: 100 Years, 20 Visionary Interiors« provides the rubric for the museum’s #digital initiatives: #VDMHomeStories.

»Like all cultural institutions, the #vitradesignmuseum is deeply affected by the current crisis. Our #digital programme aims to convey a reassuring – and vital – sense of normality. Our #digital content helps visitors expand their knowledge, offers food for thought, serves as inspiration, and sometimes just provides a means of escape. If we invite #people to participate and become involved, this is more than a service; it is part of our mission as a museum and private non-profit organization. Our aim is to bring #design and architecture to as wide an audience as possible. We trust that our present efforts will have a lasting positive effect when the crisis has passed, enabling us to react more quickly and spontaneously, to intensify our interaction with our #digital visitors, and to ensure that our museum is open to all when we are back to normal, too, whether they come to the Vitra Campus or visit us online from home.« – #mateokries, Director of the Vitra #design Museum

To engage our audiences during the temporary closure, the #vitradesignmuseum offers a variety of formats under the hashtag #VDMHomeStories. While this includes the museum’s online collection, which conveys detailed information about key objects and their designers (www.design-museum.de/collection-online), the focus will be on social media. Our new #digital programme will enable visitors to learn about current exhibitions, the collection, the architecture at the Vitra Campus, and our most recent publications and products; individual posts will relate to our themed series while more extensive films offer more in-depth information.

Chief Curator Jochen Eisenbrand guides visitors through the current main exhibition »Home Stories: 100 Years, 20 Visionary Interiors«, which examines the social and aesthetic transformations our living spaces have undergone over the course of the last century. Curator Viviane Stappmanns accompanies an online visit to the #vitradesignmuseum Gallery, where the exhibition »Typology: An Ongoing Study of Everyday Items« offers an exciting glimpse into the creation of seemingly trivial everyday objects such as wine corks or fruit crates. Other film tours are currently in production, including projects with Head of Collection & Archive Susanne Graner and curator Tanja Cunz, who will guide visitors through the exhibition »Gae Aulenti: A Creative Universe«.

In a series of Instagram live talks beginning on 2 April 2020, museum director #mateokries and his guests will speak about the museum’s current exhibitions and projects as well as discussing how #design can help solve the problems that arise in times of crisis. We are pleased to welcome #josephgrima, artistic director of the Milan Triennial’s #design Museum and creative director of the #design Academy Eindhoven, as our first guest. The films we produce for social media will also be transferred to the museum website and the museum’s YouTube channel, where an extensive archive of films and interviews relating to past exhibitions and events is waiting to be discovered.

A very special source of information and stories examining our lives between our own four walls is the »Atlas of Furniture Design« published only recently in November 2019. A period of voluntary isolation may be just what is needed for reading through the most comprehensive encyclopaedia of furniture ever produced. The book can be purchased in the museum’s extensive online shop, which will continue to ship orders for the foreseeable future. Among its products and publications you will also find the catalogue accompanying the current exhibition »Home Stories«, whose title has taken on a whole new meaning in these trying times.