Mini museums at Dutch railway stations

For the first time in the world, waiting rooms at railway stations have been enriched with precious objects and converted to mini museums. With the concept “The Museums of … ” (“Museum van …”), NorthernLight follows the new identity of the three museums for world cultures, which are museums of and about people. For five Dutch celebrities NorthernLight designed a mini museum, a project commissioned by Tropenmuseum, Africa Museum and Museum of Ethnology (together National Museum of World Cultures). TV presenter Floortje Dessing, best known for her travel TV shows, opened her mini museum on platform 8/9b of Leiden central station last week.

Travellers can visit the Museum of Floortje and can see Floortje’s favourite objects from Oceania. It offers a special collection of treasures of the sea. Floortje selected these objects because the island life in the South Pacific made the most impression on her. Tropenmuseum, Africa Museum and Museum of Anthropology together manage over 375.000 objects and utensils from all over the world. The bulk of this is stored in an underground depot. In order to make the public aware of this enormous collection, they asked Floortje Dessing and 4 other celebrities, to choose their favourite objects and to put them on display.

After Floortje Dessing, the museum of singer Kenny B, street soccer player and rapper Soufiane Touzani, presenter Filemon Wesselink and cookbook writer Yvette van Boven where opened at the stations of Arnhem, Utrecht, Zwolle and Amsterdam. The museum is designed in a way that it can easily travel to different waiting areas at different train stations and the collection can easily be adjusted. The engineering and production of the mini museums was done by Bruns.