Cinderella, Sindbad & Sinuhe

A sceno­graph­ic high­light of the exhi­bi­tion will be a won­der­ful­ly col­or­ful tent in the muse­um’s Greek court­yard! As a space ded­i­cat­ed to the oral sto­ry­telling tra­di­tion of the Ori­ent, the tent is the birth­place of many Ara­bi­an fairy tales. The ten­t’s inter­wo­ven fab­ric pan­els, gold­en on the out­side and sil­ver, blue, and orange on the inside, recall the splen­dor of col­ors in which we per­haps imag­ined the scenes of our fairy tales as chil­dren. More­over, the tex­tile tent also express­es the diverse over­laps between the two nar­ra­tive tra­di­tions. All vis­i­tors are cor­dial­ly invit­ed to lis­ten atten­tive­ly to the var­i­ous fairy tales in this mag­i­cal space. This spe­cial oral tra­di­tion is replaced by the writ­ten word in the sec­ond exhi­bi­tion area. In the vault­ed cab­i­nets of the fol­low­ing room, whose ref­er­ences to a car­a­vanserai are not coin­ci­den­tal, the most pre­cious exhibits take cen­ter stage. Vis­i­tors are guid­ed through a mean­der­ing space, encoun­ter­ing papyrus scrolls, hand pup­pets, fairy tale vol­umes, and a small cin­e­ma. Open books are not only exhibits, they also form the leit­mo­tif design of the infor­ma­tive texts.

This spe­cial exhi­bi­tion does not focus on the dif­fer­ent, the for­eign, but rather shows in a play­ful way how close­ly human­i­ty is con­nect­ed to one anoth­er, espe­cial­ly through its seem­ing­ly so spe­cial fairy tales and nar­ra­tive traditions.