Annual review 2024
We celebrated 15 years of focusTerra! The travelling exhibitions 'Expedition Solar System' and 'Waves - Dive in!' are shown internationally; the participative online exhibition 'Travel stones' enjoys repeated attention; the focusTerra team is dedicated to the planned exhibition on CO2.
In April 2024, focusTerra celebrated its 15th anniversary. The International Museum Day on 26 May was dedicated to the anniversary.
Since its opening in 2009, focusTerra has attracted over 250,000 visitors to ETH Zurich. Of the more than 20,000 visitors per year today, almost half are children and young people. As a result, focusTerra has developed into an important extracurricular learning centre where schoolchildren come into contact with geology and related sciences and technology.
Successful special exhibitions
We continue to enjoy the success of our special exhibitions ‒ online and on the move:
The focusTerra exhibition 'Waves ‒ Dive in!' about waves in everyday life, technology and research was shown at the Seemuseum Kreuzlingen until 14 April. It then travelled on to Germany, where it will be on show at the Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum in Paderborn until 5 January 2025. Further guest visits to Germany are being planned. The contents of the exhibition are available as an illustrated book in German or English.
The exhibition 'Expedition Solar System' was translated into Ukrainian last year. It was finally opened in Chernivtsi on 9 October 2024. It is one of the projects with which the Junior Academy of Sciences of Ukraine aims to bring research closer to young people in Ukraine despite the ongoing war. A big thank you to everyone who made this possible.
After winning the Open Box Special at Fast Forward Science in 2021/22, the participatory online exhibition 'Travel stones' made it onto the shortlist for the DigAMus Award in 2024, which honours the best digital projects by museums in German-speaking countries. Our public collection now comprises 180 stones and stories!
Exhibition in planning
With 'KEEP IT CO2OL', the focusTerra team is working more and more intensively on a major new project: together with experts from various fields, focusTerra is developing an exhibition on the possibilities for tackling our excessive CO2 emissions. Visitors will be invited to engage creatively and critically with the challenges and possible solutions to the impending climate catastrophe.
In the run-up to the exhibition, a photo competition was launched in 2024. The public was invited to submit pictures showing what they would like to protect from climate change or how they do it.
At the end of November, a jury selected the 14 best submissions. We present the winning images here:
A big thank you goes to the prize donors and to everyone who took part and thus helped to document changes in Switzerland with their pictures and stories and show how active we are.
'KEEP IT CO2OL' was awarded the Optimus Agora Prize in 2023, which is awarded by the Swiss National Science Foundation SNSF and swissnex San Francisco. To mark this award, swissnex organised a special preview event for the exhibition in San Francisco at the beginning of December.
The hybrid event explored the complex role of CO2 in climate change, the future of climate action and the important role museums play in raising awareness, encouraging critical thinking and stimulating meaningful dialogue.
It is planned to show an exhibit in April 2025 on the occasion of the external page Climate Week at swissnex in San Francisco.
Annual events
On the afternoon of experimentation and storytelling in February, 150 visitors came to explore the mountains through fairy tales, music and experiments.
The Long Night of Zurich's Museums at the beginning of September under the motto 'Superpowers of the Earth' was once again well attended: around 2,500 visitors came to experience the physics show, acrobatics show, lectures and interactive experiments.
focusTerra on TV
Swiss Radio and Television SRF visited focusTerra again with Schweiz aktuell (external page 'Museum focusTerra der ETH Zürich' from 30.10.2024).
Support for focusTerra
We would like to thank all those who support us so actively in the preparation of our special exhibition 'KEEP IT CO2OL' and make our exhibitions and offers possible with their generous contribution. Are you also involved?
Contact us to discuss further details of a partnership in a personal meeting. Or visit the website of the external page ETH Foundation. Thank you very much for your commitment.