The Nobel Museum’s traveling exhibition needs ten large freight containers.

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Since its inception in 2001, the traveling exhibition has visited Oslo in Norway, Tokyo, Seoul, Korea, the Museum of Natural Science, Texas, the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

A team of some 10 museum curators, craftsmen and designers travels with the exhibition to build display cases, install lights, film projectors, texts and so on. The exhibition is a major production, which travels in no less than ten containers between location cities, staying around six months in each museum.

During the autumn of 2004 until January 2005, the exhibition was showed in the Strozzi Palace in Florence. After that, its schedule takes it to New York and San Francisco. Discussions are ongoing with other cities for further touring round the USA. Then the jubilee exhibition will return to Europe to be shown in London, and possibly also Berlin and Paris.

LOGISTICAL OPERATION
– It’s a major logistical operation to manage this traveling exhibition, says Olov Amelin, chief curator of the Nobel Museum, who was on site in Florence for a week during the autumn to prepare the exhibition.

The Nobel Museum chose to work together with ICEFAT-member MTAB, partly because they had experience of similar exhibition transport operations, and partly because of their international network capable of handling major exhibitions.

– We have high standards applying to our suppliers, stresses Olov Amelin. No deadlines must be missed, and nothing must go wrong at any stage in the transport operation. After all, the people invited to openings are of the order of presidents and Nobel prize-winners, busy people.

BOAT AND PLANE
Most of the exhibition has been taken from continent to continent by ship, while the most valuable original objects and the most sensitive electronics have been flown between exhibition cities.

– There’s been a lot of paperwork and there are actually big differences between what different countries require in terms of import regulations, explains Olov Amelin. In Malaysia, customs wanted completely different documents from other countries. In Italy, where they’re more used to traveling exhibitions, the whole thing was much simpler. Oddly enough, the USA was the most awkward place, because trucks weren’t allowed to travel on certain days.

Olov Amelin has felt secure with the transport operation and has trust in his partners.

– The transport companies in different countries have handled the exhibition in the best possible way, and we haven’t had any complaints during the whole three years.

Johan Öfverbeck has been the project director responsible for these transports at MTAB, co-ordinating a number of art transport companies around the world.

– What’s difficult with an assignment as big as this is finding the right agents in the right locations, and knowing what their specialties are in art freight, he says. For this, I’ve found the international ICEFAT network, of which we are members, to be extremely useful.