Sacred and arcane objects have always held an immense fascination for museum visitors and anthropologists; their prevalence in museum collections everywhere shows how powerfully they attract us. Many of them are hidden away deep inside museum storage rooms. In the source countries, only certain people in certain situations would ever have been permitted to see or touch them. How can a museum display such items? Who decides what should remain concealed? The “[Open] Secrets” project was an attempt to find an answer to this key question, which lies at the very heart of what ethnological museums do. A complex exhibition architecture created by studio TheGreenEyl (re)presented showing/not-showing; here, the boundary between sacred and profane was seen as political, contingent upon a specific time and space.

You can find a detailed description of the project here.