EXPANDED STUDIOLO
Exhibition design for MOOI – voor het onderwijs gemaakt (BEAUTIFUL – made for education), a smaller permanent presentation of the National Museum of Education, located in the basement of its brand new accommodation: the evenly beautiful building ‘De Holland’, designed and realised by the dutch architect Sybold van Ravesteyn during the years 1937-1939. The presentation displays a smaller and specific selection of peculiar, valuable, unique or in any other way special objects; the so-called pearls from the collection of the museum.
The design for the exhibition starts from the historical model of the studiolo: a small private room for reading and meditation that appeared in the palaces of the Quattrocento in Italy and that was commonly furnished with a specific selection of books, objects and works of art. The model of the studiolo is folded, stretched and fitted into the gridded space of the museum, serially expanded in order to accommodate all objects and materialised in Formica, the quintessential material of post-war educational reform.
