Museum Bhavan

How to Turn the Book into an Exhibition

First, buy the Museum Bhavan box from Steidl Verlag. In the box you will find nine accordion fold books that are my miniature museums: Museum of Machines, Museum of Men, Little Ladies Museum, Museum of Photography, Museum of Vitrines, Museum of Furniture, Godrej Museum, Printing Press Museum and Ongoing Museum
The box also contains a text called Conversation Chambers (leave the text book in the box or on a table)
Build nine shelves that are 8 feet long and 4 inches deep with a 2mm lip in the front
Paint the shelves the colour of the wall
Choose the configuration you would like for the shelves. If you choose to have all nine shelves in a single row, you will require 72 feet (approximately 21 metres) of running wall space. You can also put three shelves together to create three longer shelves of 24 feet in three rows, or place all nine shelves one below the other to form a single column
Unfurl the accordion museums to their fullest lengths and place them on the shelves such
that they are standing. Make sure they are open wide enough for the images to be read
You can also open the books such that the front flap forms a triangle and becomes a label for
the museum on view
You can also clip pages of the accordion together to hide some of the images
You can combine different books to make your own museum. For instance, you could take six pages from Little Ladies Museum and place them next to four pages from Ongoing Museum and include two pages from File Museum
For a short event, you could (at the risk of slightly damaging them), put them flat on the wall with Blu Tack
The exhibition is now ready to open
Alternatively, if you would like to show just one museum at a time, you can display a different book each day on your dining table or mantlepiece or every ten minutes if you want to make an event out of it
You could also find a shop with empty vitrines and ask them if you can have an exhibition for a day