I used to work for an institution where the recreation of life-like, full scale models was a no-go. This is not a rare case. Stagings have a bad reputation: They are perceived as gaudy, theatrical, too pedagogic, at least in the curators’ eyes. Once you take on the role of the observer, this perspective is—as so often—relativized. 

On the 7th floor of the Osaka Municipal Housing Corporation the “Osaka Museum of Housing and Living” spreads over two floors. Residing on top of a railway station and several layers of city bureaucracy, visitors enter the world of Edo period Osaka. A small neighborhood—a standard slice of Osaka in the first half of the 19th century—invites exploration. Decorated for festivities, the shop windows on the ground floor of the Machiyas (traditional Japanese city houses) display artfully arranged sculptures of merchandise based on an original publication from the period. Here, a day lasts 45 minutes, and during nighttime, fireworks explode as a light show on the exhibition hall’s high ceiling. 

All this is, at worst, amusing, and at best truly informative, precisely because it is so engaging and immersive. This exhibition is no theme park. It is true to form, to every detail of construction and display of everyday practices and cultural traditions. Take off your shoes and dive in: elegant sliding door constructions next to explanations of differentiated toilet etiquettes, plastic food on real tatami mats. 

Once the circuit neighborhood tour is finished, a model and object exhibition on the lower floor offers even more context. Diving into older and younger moments of Osaka building histories, the miniature depictions provide no less detail. All models show construction in action rather than simply described as text. Here, animation travels through all scales and provokes feelings forgotten in exhibition making: the scandalous delight of being entertained first, and informed anyway.

sba.