Re-reading the Manual of Travelling Exhibitions, UNESCO, 1953

The Manual of Traveling Exhibitions, published by UNESCO in 1953, is a handbook on the organization of traveling exhibitions. Directed to museums and other public institutions, it formulates a grammar of exhibiting: from organizational issues to exhibition design. The "Manual" reads from today's perspective as a manifesto of a still unbroken modernity of the immediate post-war period. An extensively commented reprint of the Manual of Traveling Exhibitions aims, on the one hand, to contextualize and critically question the historical source and, on the other hand, to highlight various forms of updating. The contents of the "Manual" are just as significant as its immanent defects, the book design or the photographic logic of the illustrations. --Front cover