Cupnoodles, Petroleum and Technology — Three transcending Museums
Three museums in Yokohama, Stavanger and Berlin taught me something unexpected
Everyone loves a good museum visit. It is an intensive learning session in our free time. Although it is the objects themselves that do all the talking, but let’s not overlook the contributions of the museum curators. They carefully select exhibits to educate and entertain the visitors. It is a subtle art to organize an immersive itinerary that engages the visitors and teaches them what the museum name suggests. It is even harder to surpass the visitors’ expectation and show them something extra. But some museums have achieved just that. Here are the three museums that have gone above and beyond their subject boundaries. The visits were thought-provoking and emotional.
1. From Cupnoodles to innovation
320 million servings of instant ramen are eaten everyday globally, according to the World Instant Noodles Association. They even become like cash among American prisoners. Finally, they are not only eaten on Earth, but also in space! Instant ramen is deceptively simple and yet has become such a huge success. Few people realize that this product was invented by a man called Momofuku Ando in 1958. And even fewer knows that he worked 20/7 for a whole year for it. And you can learn all that in the Cupnoodles Museum in Yokohama, Japan. From the Instant Noodles Hall of Fame (Figure 2.) to the recreated tiny house where Ando developed his first instant ramen, visitors can relive the 60 year history of instant noodles and the life achievement of Mr. Ando.
Just when the visitors feel enough noodles already, the subject begins to change from ramen to innovation. The “Creative Thinking Boxes” is a museum area that features interactive items, art pieces and optical illusions. They encourage visitors by following Mr Ando’s example to discover something completely new, get hints everywhere especially in nature, invite others to participate, look at things from every angle, break the status quo, and be persistent. The idea is that everyone can replicate Mr Ando’s success as long as he or she is as curious and resilient.
I would have never expected that a visit in a cupnoodles museum could give me a lesson about invention and innovation. The “Creative Thinking Boxes” uplift the museum. Just like a piece of music modulates smoothly from one tonality to another, the subjects transit from Mr Ando’s specific story to the general creative process. The whole place is submerged in the unique Japanese aesthetic. Together with its “My Cupnoodles Factory” and “World Noodles Road” at the upper floors, the museum truly engages all our five senses. In summary, the Cupnoodles Museum is creative about creativity.
2. The Norwegian ambition
Norway is a beautiful country and famous for its petroleum and salmon. These are also the two most important exports of the country. While salmon can be seen everywhere, petroleum is only on display in some places, one of them must be the Norwegian Petroleum Museum. It is built in Stavanger, the Oil Capital of Norway.
Behind the entrance, visitors can learn not only the four essentials of petroleum formation, but also the scale, history and technology behind the Norwegian petroleum industry, which has played an outsized role in the modern Norwegian economy. Around 5% of the workforce are in the petroleum industry in 2018. For 50 years, this natural resource has without doubt brought great wealth to the people: today, the government oil fund has exceeded NOK 10,100 billion, that is, $220,281 for each Norwegian. And Norway has invested this money wisely into education, infrastructure, welfare and lately renewable energy.
Given the importance of oil in Norway, in Stavanger and in a museum dedicated to it, I expected that only good things could be heard about oil there. But as soon as I set foot on the first floor, a poster asked:
“Are you part of the climate problem?” (I am guilty as charged).
This rhetorical question preluded the whole exhibition Climate for Change. The exhibition first made it clear that our ability to harness energy drove our society forward. Right now 80% of our energy comes from fossil sources. And fossil fuel has caused climate change. Its environmental impact can be felt in every corner of the globe. This has become one of our greatest challenges. Change must come. And the museum has discussed reforms in the free market, international collaboration and our lifestyles. Putting a price on carbon, developing renewable energy source and reducing the carbon footprints in our daily lives are the measures that we all must take now. As an oil nation, Norway needs to reduce its dependency on this lifeblood. Its sovereign wealth funds also hold sway in the global energy transformation.
Petroleum is both a blessing and a curse. So Norway needs to balance between the economical benefits and the severe environmental impacts brought by this energy source. The Norwegian Petroleum Museum in Stavanger did not shy away from the dark sides of its subject. It gave a dire warning for the “business-as-usual” scenario but meanwhile it also projected confidence on the way forward. The museum made it clear that as a large petroleum producer, Norway can punch above its weight in the global energy conversation.
3. Technology and history
You can see the German Museum of Technology in Berlin miles away because the towering “Raisin Bomber” on its rooftop is just so conspicuous. The museum boasts a large collection of trains, airplanes, ships and other industrial artefacts mainly from Germany. There is something for everyone. And everyone can easily spend a day there. With the well-written explanations, it offers a great education about our technological achievements. But what struck me the most was the other side of the story — the human suffering brought by the technology, which has been rarely mentioned elsewhere.
For example, the sugar exhibition not only taught me a lot about sugars and their production. I had long taken these sweet crystals for granted, and therefore I was surprised to learn that “the planting and harvesting of the sugar beets were the most labor-intensive work in agriculture until far into the 20th century” and “sugar production has been associated with exploitation and suffering of the human as well as the animal workforce for many centuries.”
Another great example is the rail transport exhibition. Because it was once the main focus of the museum, there is no surprise that a huge section was dedicated to locomotives and wagons. There I learned that at the beginning of the 20th century a half million people worked in the German railway. They were punctual, disciplined and organized like an army. The staff were very proud of their profession, even though many of them were run over by trains due to a lack of safety regulations.
Among all the exhibits, one covered goods wagon stood out. It represented one of the many Holocaust trains owned by the Deutsche Reichsbahn between 1941 and 1944. Originally designated for cargoes and animals, such a small wagon often carried more than a hundred victims to their final destinations during that time. As soon as I walked into it, the dark, hermetic and claustrophobic space slienced every sound. Even though the wagon was empty, it was filled with one thing: desperation. And I could not imagine the horror when it was full of people. The ten seconds there was already too long for me, and the text panel revealed that a trip often took days so that many already lost their lives on road.
This wagon was not the only example in the museum that forced powerful feelings on its visitors. In the maritime exhibition, the lower deck of a slave ship was recreated. It reminded visitors of the scene in the slave ship Brooks. The slaves were caged, shackled and packed. A walk through that dark and suffocating space was heart-wrenching. My whole body was pushing me out. The text panel wrote:
The cruelty on the deck of a slave ship cannot be depicted and should not be shown here… crammed like soulless products on supermarket shelves, the slave sculptures should remind us of the criminal human trafficking, in which many European countries made their fortunes. Meanwhile, let us never forget that human trafficking is still active today in Europe.
Finally, in the aviation section, a seemingly ordinary evening in a officer’s mess was staged. In the background, a black-and-white photo depicted some burning airplane wreckage on the ground (Fig. 7).
But it was anything but ordinary. The text panel explained that nearly half of the German pilots lost their lives during the First World War. The officers were constantly distressed by imagining their own death by burning and witnessing the fall of their comrades. The officers’ mess was where they could have some normality and escape from their own angst for a short while. Such a scene not only highlighted the special status of the pilots, but also projected calm to the public. The tranquility of this room was in stark contrast with the horrors of the war.
This spacious museum presented the highlights of the German technology in the past two centuries. A large part of the itinerary was awe-inspiring. But when the museum revealed the associated dark history, the atmosphere could become quite depressing. For me, it laid bare that technology is just a tool that be used both ways. It is our utmost responsibility to apply it for the benefit of mankind.
Conclusion
I had not expected a lesson about innovation in a museum about instant ramen, nor did I anticipate multiple hits by the feels train in a technology museum. I was a bit surprised by the climate change discussion in the petroleum museum. Their curators clearly made the effort to teach us something even more general and more essential than the specific museum subjects themselves. They all transcended their domains. And the experiences were unforgettable.
I am quite certain that this is not an exhaustive list. There are many other museums that bring powerful emotions to their visitors. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum depicted the apocalyptic horror of nuclear weapons. But at the same time I could also see the human resilience and what’s more: hope, that we humans could stand back up even after a nuclear disaster. A second example was Micropia in Amsterdam. It overturned the idea that all microbes were bad. In fact, they had been around long before us and will still roam the Earth long after we are gone. And the museum revealed that they have always been an integral part of our own health. They are also essential players in the ecosystem. This one visit taught me how transient we humans are and how we should learn to live along the other species.
A museum visit is always a pleasure, sometimes a surprise. Now please tell me which museum impresses you the most.
