Hands on nature – 100 years of Haus der Natur

On 15 July 1924, the "Museum of Performing and Applied Natural History" opened its doors for the first time in the former Hofstall barracks, where the Großes Festspielhaus is located today. This year, in 2024, the Haus der Natur celebrates its 100th anniversary.

The anniversary was an opportunity to scour the museum's depots for preserved historical exhibits and bring them before the curtain.

As early as the 1920s, the Haus der Natur tried to fulfil its educational mission of understanding nature through interactivity and vivid displays. Communicating the great laws of nature was the declared aim of a new type of museum, an educational institution for all people. This made the museum one of the pioneers of museum design and education at the time. It presented objects to touch, admire and marvel at. Many of the preserved historical movement models and display boards have not lost their fascination to this day. If they have not been "overtaken" by new scientific findings, they are still correct today and present themselves with timeless aesthetics. These objects and models, which are loved and still remembered by many visitors, have been brought back for the special exhibition. The exhibition thus offers an overview of the creative ideas that have been used to bring interactivity to the museum since its foundation. The surprising specimens, movement models, the Transparent Man or enlarged plant cells - they all show a "virtual" reality and some of them were invented and built as early as the 1920s.

Concept & curation:
Barbara Loidl, Elisabeth Scheicher, Sonja Frühwirth, Robert Lindner