Ice Age

Topic: Earth & Space Sciences Subtopic: Ecology

Ideum User

Case Study

of an Exhibition

by Mark Magidson

Published on October 05, 2007, Modified on October 15, 2007

  • Description and goals

    The Yorkshire Museum in York had taken delivery of its own “fridge mountain” for its new exhibition, Ice Age, which has just opened. The 6-metre high mountain of 50 fridges, fridge freezers, ovens and mini fridges has been built in the museum’s main gallery.

    Visitors to Ice Age are able to open all the fridges on the bottom row of the “mountain” and discover museum artefacts, fantastic facts about the Ice Age witheven real ice cores.

    The Ice Age exhibition explores the effect of both the icy and the warm periods of the last two million years on our landscape and wildlife – particularly in Yorkshire. It also looks at what climate could hold in store for us in the future and the way our activities are affecting the climate. Sound installations by Craig Vear accompany each gallery.

    The 435 square metre exhibition, designed by Mark Magidson of Exhibition Plus

  • Development process and challenges

    We work closely with the museum in house team. Greatest challenge was to source and clean over 50 used fridges for fridge mountain.

  • Lessons learned, mistakes we made (and what we did about them)

    Our budget worked out at about £180 per square metre. As this was very low, we used the considerable in house skills of the museum team.

  • Exhibition Opened: April 2006

  • Traveling Exhibition: No

  • Location: York, England, U.K.

  • Website(s):  http://www.explus.co.uk