Alfred Nobel – Networks of Innovation

The Nobel Museum's latest travelling exhibition: Alfred Nobel – Networks of Innovation is on a world tour. The première took place in Dubai, April–May 2008. The next stop was Paris at Palais de la découverte. March 1st 2009 the exhibition opened at A. S. Popov Central Museum of Communications in S:t Petersburg. During 2010 it was shown in Stockholm, and after a stop in New Delhi during winter 2011, Alfred Nobel – Networks of Innovation will open in Tokyo in October 2011.

The exhibition presents the innovator and entrepreneur Alfred Nobel, who lived in Paris for 20 years and built up his industrial empire from there. It is a state-of-the-art exhibition that has been created in cooperation with artists and filmmakers and using the latest technology, developed in collaboration with Samsung Electronics. 

The Nobel Museum's global travelling exhibition presents the entrepreneur and innovator Alfred Nobel. The visitor will learn more about his life, his network of co-workers, business contacts and friends and, finally, how he gets the idea to donate money for an international prize. Through video artworks and new-recorded short films the visitor gets to know Alfred Nobel in a new way and also to meet some Nobel Laureates and members of the Nobel Committees on a number of small monitors.

The exhibition is built in five pavilions with different headlines, each one of the pavilions deals with a part of the story about Alfred Nobel. It is:

• The cities S:t Petersburg and Paris – where Nobel lived most of his life
• Innovations – that characterized his lifetime achievement
• Networks – which made his large business empire possible
• The last will – the foundation for the Nobel Prize

Alfred Nobel – Networks of Innovation is innovative just as Alfred Nobel himself. In total there is no less then 160 monitors installed in the exhibition. From one single computer it is possible to design, synchronize, schedule and publish information on the thin client in each monitor. An example of the advantages with this flexible solution is that texts could easily be changed to another language when the exhibition arrives in a new country.

This exhibition project has also resulted in a book. Alfred Nobel: Networks of Innovation is published by the Nobel Museum in collaboration with Science History Publications/USA.

Exhibition première took place in Dubai in spring 2008 and after Paris the world tour continued to St Petersburg, Stockholm and New Delhi. In October 2011 the exhibition will open in Tokyo.

Previous travelling exhibitions

The Nobel Foundation's Centennial Exhibition Cultures of Creativity was created in duplicate and one copy travelled the world from 2001–2007. The last stop for the travelling exhibition was in Abu Dhabi. The tour programme was:

• Norwegian Folk Museum, Oslo, Norway
  August 9, 2001–December 17, 2001
• National Science Museum, Ueno Park, Tokyo, Japan
  March 18, 2002–June 9, 2002
• The Rodin Gallery, Seoul, Korea
  August 22 (opening ceremony, August 23 – open to public) 2002–November 3, 2002
• Houston Museum of Natural Science, Texas, USA
  February 7, 2003–11 May 2003
• Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, Illinois, USA
  September 27, 2003–December 10, 2003
• National Science Center, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  March 20–June 27, 2004
• Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy
  September 15–January 2, 2005
• New York Hall of Science, New York, USA
  March 13, 2005–May 21, 2005
• Exploratorium, San Francisco, USA
  July 14, 2005–October 2, 2005
• British Library, London, UK
  December 2, 2005–March 15, 2006
• Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum (VITM),  Bangalore, India
  May 27–August 31,  2006
• National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore.
  October 26, 2006–January 24, 2007
• University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
  April 16–July 15, 2007
• The Emirates Palace, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
  October 23–December 15, 2007