Exhibition "90 Years of the Salzburg Festival - The Great World Theater"

19.07.2010 | http://90jahre.salzburgerfestspiele.at
 
In 2010 the Salzburg Festival celebrates its 90th anniversary. The Salzburg Festival was born on 22 August 1920 when Hugo von Hofmannsthal's morality play Jedermann was premiered on Domplatz under the direction of Max Reinhardt. The Salzburg Festival has since become the foremost festival encompassing the three genres of opera, theatre and concerts.

The main exhibition in Salzburg Museum (Kunsthalle) offers an insight into the inner workings of the world-famous venue. The journey begins with a look at the idea behind the Festival's inception and follows its historical development and establishment before continuing right into its heart and culminating in the central installation that is the "world stage" - a stylised stage upon which various multimedia events are played out.

Visitors follow a timeline that shows the evolution of the Salzburg Festival through the decades. The timeline not only gives details of individual personalities and their work, but also explains how they tie in with political and social events and highlights the paradoxes, breaks with previous traditions and constants that have characterised, and continue to characterise, the festival.
 
A conventional exhibition using panels, artefacts and models was adjudged to be insufficient to portray the breadth of artistic achievement. "Audio tracks" and "spoken word extracts" from key historical documents of the Salzburg Festival were used to create the exhibition space; in other words, the spaces in which the information is presented, so-called "ribs", turn the audio and spoken-word tracks into a visual display by portraying them as a chronicle that unfolds around the room.

checkpointmedia was commissioned to design the exhibition by the Salzburg Festival and Salzburg Museum.