Travel as a Tool

Curated by Anna Vihma (Designmuseo), Elna Svenle (Vandalorum Museum for Art and Design), and Anne Blond (Tønder Art Museum), Travel as a Tool – a collaboration between three design and art museums in Finland, Sweden, and Denmark – focusses on the impact of travel on 40 designers and architects from the Nordic countries, from the 1940s until today. The exhibition is organized thematically showcasing a variety of reasons why designers travel; in addition to seeking inspiration, new energy, materials, or techniques for their work, designers have also travelled because they wanted to promote change by sharing their skills and knowledge, and to generate new possibilities and opportunities in their destination countries. The exhibition includes displays of artifacts that are either traces or results of designers’ travels. Travel journals, notebooks, letters, souvenirs, bills, photographs, drawings, and films provide generous and valuable information about the designers’ travels – and show the audience how design historians get to know, interpret, and recount these travels of past and contemporary designers (Figure 1). The exhibition design itself, conceived by Henri Halla-aho, makes use of Maija M€ akikalli is a researcher in Cultural History and currently works as a project manager in the National Archives of Finland. maimak@utu.fi © 2022 Maija M€ akikalli DOI: 10.1080/17547075.2021.2016322