REVIEW
EXHIBITION
Travelling memory of the Holocaust
“Auschwitz: Not long
ago. Not far away”
David González Vázquez,
University of Barcelona, European
Observatory on Memories (EUROM)
S
eptember 2018, Madrid. The second extension of the Exhibition “Auschwitz: Not
long ago. Not far away” becomes official. Originally programmed to be shown
from December 2017 to June 2018, it has been extended first until October 2018 and
finally until February 2019. Designed by Musealia, a company dedicated to the creation of
travelling exhibitions based in Donostia (País Vasco), the exhibition has received 450,000
visitors so far, a remarkable figure.
This is not a typical travelling exhibition because of its subject matter, its size, the
specificity of the materials on display, and above all because this is the first time that
hundreds of original elements have travelled out of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial
and Museum to be shown in an exhibition site away from its original place. The Centro
de Exposiciones Arte Canal (Canal Art Exhibition Centre), a large space managed by the
Regional Government of the Community of Madrid, has been the first site to host the
exhibition, from where it should travel to different international cities over the next seven
years.
The project execution has requested a strong commitment, with a large investment
of resources and the management of a complex international co-production with the
participation of several agents across its different phases. A total of 600 original objects,
400 images and 100 stories make up the cast of elements on which is built the museum
framework of “Auschwitz: Not long ago. Not far away” Together with the Auschwitz-
Birkenau Memorial and Museum, other major institutions such as Yad Vashem, the U.S.
Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and the Wiener Library in London have
collaborated, as well as other private collections.
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Observing Memories
ISSUE 2