Museum 9, Now

• Virtual Museum Schielandhuis
• Paul van de Laar, real exhibition
• Five March, virtual reconstruction

It seems strange to say, but nowadays Rotterdam fails to generate more history. Rotterdam is part of Holland and of Europe. What is happening elsewhere is happening in Rotterdam. Big festivals are organized, scandals are revealed, skyscrapers are built. But this is all like it is everywhere else. The end of local history.

Five March: Rotterdam was generating history starting around 1850, by growing incredible quickly, by scandals around the harbour, with figures like Pincoff. Also giant builders like GJ de Jongh, who built the inner harbours, Maashaven, Rijnhaven and Waalhaven, big like former cities. Then the modernization of the city, sacrificing whole popular neighbourhoods and prefering a rather conservative design for a townhall. The war and the destruction and clearing of the inner city. The reconstruction of the harbours after the war. All very exciting. Nowadays we live in peace and more stability. Rotterdam has a local television station and a local whether forcast. But the rains comes from England, and the financial crises from the USA, the oil from the east...

The character of the exhibition is changed in the last rooms. Real historical items are replaced by video screens. Nice chairs and paintings left behind. Events are shown, like the summer carnaval. Reality of objects is replaced by ‘new media’. In fact this can be seen as a preparation for the virtual exhibition on Second Life. Already the way to show the bombardment of Rotterdam in 1940 is done in a way suitable for Second Life. History in this was is as virtual as a virtual world.

http://www.hmr.rotterdam.nl/