Possible themes

Some staff here at the Museum got together to workshop some of the main ideas that had come out of the initial audience research. We’ve come up with a very general description of the show.

The exhibition will investigate the view that the underlying driver of evil is fear. Over time the things that people fear has changed and so have our perceptions and opinions of what is evil. The exhibit will explore the roots and essence of evil. It will demonstrate that evil in modern popular culture has roots in historical culture. We journey through genocides religion, slavery and the face of evil. It will explore significant objects, personal stories, powerful sights, sounds to show the variety of perspectives on some of humanity’s darkest experiences.

How we will do this is all a movable feast at the moment but here’s four main themes identified (and also adapted from the Tropenmuseum exhibition) so far -

1. Origins of Evil
· Duality – Good vs Bad introductory theme. ‘maintaining the balance’ in life.
· Religion/Spiritualism

2. Protection from Evil
· Amulets and incantation
· Ritual and superstitions and Exorcisms

3. Faces of Evil
· Demonic representations
· Natural world, Everyday beasts
· Perpetrators and victims - Exploitation, Abuse of power.
· Vices
· The other– the terrible unknown distorted or disguised version of humanity.
· Subcultures - disrupting conformity

4. Impotent Evil - representations of evil so commonly used in public dialogue that the icons of devils and demons and Hell have become impotent and kitsch.

Perhaps there are some other themes or stories you can think of?

All About Evil Front-end Evaluation

As part of the planning for the All About Evil exhibition we conducted an extensive front-end evaluation with three key audience segments (boys aged 10 and 15; girls aged 12-13; parents and young adults (in their early 20s). We wanted to both test out the concept of “evil” and get some feedback on the Tropenmuseum’s approach to the exhibition. The research was conducted for the Museum by Vivid, a qualitative research company.

So, what was our audiences’ connection with ‘evil’??

We found that the word ‘evil’ had powerful connotations:
* Evil used to have strong spiritual references: evil was previously the devil’s work, part of the underworld

But evil has moved on and now has much stronger human connotations:
* We are saturated with images of humans exacting evil on each other every day
* Evil is now present and very real
* So evil has taken on a contemporary meaning that is inextricably linked to human behaviour, as opposed to mythology or theology

Given this contemporary perception of evil, audiences were largely confused by the exhibition theme:
* Contemporary evil covers themes such as terrorism, pedophilia and drug use which doesn’t seem like content for a museum exhibition
* Our audience expects to see more historical vs. contemporary content at museum exhibitions

The confusion also comes from the topic as they couldn’t identify a learning outcome as most audiences presume they will learn something on a specific topic at a museum exhibition:
* But no one could state what they might learn at an exhibition on evil
* Parents were particularly concerned as they see museums as a way of secretly ‘smuggling learning’ into their kids under the guise of having a good time
* Participants couldn’t articulate any potential benefit of an exhibition on evil

Because evil is now seen to be the realm of humans not myths, they felt evil was personal:
* Respondents’ personal concepts of evil are extremely varied and personal but nearly all modern

Those sampled expected to see some representation of their personal concept of evil in the exhibition, which given the variation of what they thought evil was, means that there is potential for disappointment. These conceptions of evil will be explored in my next blog post.

The exhibition concept

This blog outlines some thinking on the direction of an exhibition with a working title All about Evil.

The Australian Museum is adapting a Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam exhibition concept for an Australian audience. Originally titled, Het Kwaad (All About Evil), the Tropenmuseum described their exhibition as being about “... the root of all misery, utter disaster and every kind of bad luck. This exhibition tells the story of man’s struggle against evil down the centuries. A story that spans all ages and countries, cultures and religions.

The Australian Museum (AM) exhibition will be arranged as a world cultures/ popular culture exhibit. It’s not intended to be a factual treatment of actual Evil events; rather it is intended that the exhibition select a range of historic narratives, legends and myths, sagas and folklore, superstitions and contemporary belief systems to explore both the popular and exotic concepts of evil and how these concepts have shaped cultural perceptions and behaviour. We’re aiming to show a range of historical and contemporary perspectives in order to challenge the audience’s preconceptions of evil.

‘Evil’ is subjective and the concept of what is evil has changed significantly through time and varies between western and traditional cultures. While the exhibition will include objects from the Museum and other collections around Australia, strong 2D/3D visual elements, film, music, text, audio visual and multimedia as well as interactive components; it is a difficult topic including contentious themes and explicit imagery and objects.

There is opportunity to challenge, provoke, surprise, be controversial, show contemporary viewpoints, display popular culture, inject humour, have slick technology and create an immersive experience. This is where we need your feedback and so we’re inviting you to participate and tell us what you think about the idea!

We look forward to hearing your (evil) thoughts to help us make this exhibition a real showstopper.

...remember - “it’s not a soap opera until someone’s evil twin shows up”