Museum of Communication, Communication museum in Bern, Switzerland
The Museum of Communication occupies its own purpose-built home in Bern, opened in 1990 and extended from 2000 with an events room, cafeteria and shop. Since 17 August 2017 the core exhibition has been organised around visitors: they meet communicators who engage them in dialogue, try out analogue and digital communication themselves, and move through stations on sending and receiving messages.
Founded in 1907 as the corporate museum of Swiss Post, it first showed a stamp collection in Bern's main post office and was closed during the First World War. After a move to the Swiss Alpine Museum it drew about 12,000 visitors a year until 1939. In 1990 it opened its own PTT Museum building, and in 1997 it became an independent foundation renamed Museum of Communication. A redesigned core exhibition opened on 17 August 2017.
The museum's name dates from 1997, when it became an independent foundation of Swiss Post and Swisscom and widened its theme from postal history to communication in general. Visitors meet staff called communicators, who are present at all times and seek direct dialogue rather than acting as conventional museum guards. Temporary exhibitions have addressed inhibitions, the art of growing old and silence; the show "Sounds of Silence" won several international awards, including the iF Design Award.
The museum is one of eleven institutions in Bern's Museumsquartier, so several museums can be visited on one outing. The core exhibition opened on 17 August 2017 after a year of renovation, and communicators are present at all times to guide dialogue rather than simply supervise. Allow time for hands-on stations where visitors act as sender and recipient.
The museum's communicators are not traditional guards but engage visitors in direct dialogue, a concept that earned the Council of Europe Museum Prize in 2019. The temporary exhibition "Sounds of Silence" won the iF Design Award. Visitor numbers reached a record 115,664 in 2019.
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