What to do?
On the meaning of human work

The exhi­bi­tion ​“What is to be done?” presents sta­tis­ti­cal data and video inter­views with 100 peo­ple on the mean­ing and val­ue of work. It uses exhi­bi­tion media and instal­la­tions to illus­trate the abstract theme. An ani­mal trail with stuffed or arti­fi­cial ani­mals sym­bol­izes var­i­ous themes, such as the ant colony or the sloth. The ref­er­ence to ani­mals is also tak­en up in the adver­tis­ing graph­ics, in which ani­mals rep­re­sent human work­ers. The exhi­bi­tion is com­ple­ment­ed by a sup­port­ing pro­gram, a blog, and a Face­book fan page. Instead of a cat­a­log, an exhi­bi­tion spe­cial was pub­lished in the Frank­furter All­ge­meine Zeitung.

“In addi­tion to exam­in­ing social devel­op­ments, the exhi­bi­tion places great empha­sis on the per­spec­tives of the indi­vid­ual: per­son­al con­cerns about liveli­hood, sat­is­fac­tion and social recog­ni­tion, and, last but not least, the func­tion of work as a mean­ing­ful activ­i­ty. It empha­sizes that use­ful­ness can­not be the ulti­mate argu­ment when it comes to under­stand­ing the mean­ing of work; that pay is not the only cri­te­ri­on for employ­ment, and that train­ing paths that are sole­ly geared to the cur­rent demands of the labor mar­ket are rarely advan­ta­geous. Final­ly, the exhi­bi­tion explores the pos­si­bil­i­ties of a com­mu­ni­ty of sol­i­dar­i­ty, which could be strength­ened by poli­cies that do not hide behind the per­ceived con­straints of the glob­al­ized econ­o­my.” — Prof. Nico­la Lepp, Curator.

The Wolf­gang Staub­ing Hall, locat­ed in the rear court­yard of the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um since the end of 2008, serves as a space for inter­dis­ci­pli­nary col­lab­o­ra­tive projects. The tem­po­rary exhi­bi­tion is joint­ly orga­nized by the Senck­en­berg Muse­um and the Frank­furt His­tor­i­cal Museum.