CHANGE NOW - Ships change the world

Ahoy - the well-known sailor's greeting welcomes guests in the entrance area as oversized lettering. Hundreds of ship models, from miniatures to the original racing sailor with which Willi Kuhweide won his first Olympic gold in 1964, immediately set the mood for the cosmos of shipping and, by playing with dimensions, are intended to remind visitors that ships are a subject of superlatives: large, rough and extreme. Many port visitors know the surprise effect that comes over them when a container ship as tall as a house glides past them.

After the foray through the "harbor", the ecosystem of the sea opens up. A parade of whales moves through the room. An abstract, oversized fishing net makes clear the danger to which the sea and the species living in it are exposed. CHANGE NOW! wants to clearly show how stressed the ocean is due to whaling, industrial fishing and diesel emissions. Guests should consciously feel this, but also be surprised by the diverse facets that ships have.

Ships are: Data loggers, fish factories, employers, environmental destroyers and heroes, and more. The different roles they have and in which they change the world are broken down into ten theses. These act like oversized book pages and shine a spotlight on the impact that people with ships and maritime technologies are having on the world. The theses are the entrance to research-based zones that address aspects that researchers at the DSM and its cooperation partners are dealing with.

After the tenth thesis, guests board an abstract research ship in the Gravel Bed area and roam through 150 years of research shipping. In the shadow of the oversized Science lettering, the increasing specialization of ships and professionalization of research shipping becomes clear. Research ships like the POLARSTERN set course for areas with extreme climatic conditions and, as a survival capsule with a laboratory, make it possible for researchers to collect data.

Scientists give an insight into the work on board in audio clips and film recordings. Technical instruments from GEOMAR clearly show how much logistics are involved in an expedition where samples are taken from water, air and the seafloor.

The deep sea is an almost unexplored area of the oceans. CHANGE NOW invites visitors into an enigmatic and mysterious underwater world and shows specimens of creatures from the German Oceanographic Museum in Stralsund that live in darkness more than 200 meters below the water's surface.

Lenders and cooperation partners of the CHANGE NOW! Exhibition are: the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), the German Oceanographic Museum Stralsund, the European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling ECORD, GEOMAR - Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, MARUM - Center for Marine Environmental Sciences at the University of Bremen, Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research in Bremen (ZMT) and the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency in Rostock (BSH).

CHANGE NOW was supported with funds from the Leibniz Research Museums Action Plan. The exhibition will be on view at the DSM from February 25 to July 31, 2022.

Tickets for guided tours can be booked at www.dsm.museum/ticket.

Access to the exhibition

The special exhibition INTO THE ICE is located in the extension building of the DSM. As the building is due to be renovated in the near future, visits to the exhibition will take place exclusively in the form of accompanied tours or themed tours, which will allow all guests to visit the exhibition safely. Until July 31, 2022, guided tours will be offered on Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays, with a maximum of 25 visitors per tour. During vacation weeks and on public holidays, there are daily appointments. Tickets can be booked in advance at www.dsm.museum/ticket, remaining tickets are available at the Kogge-Halle box office half an hour before the start of the respective date.

There are two variants:

• On the accompanying tours, museum guests explore the exhibition independently along a predefined route accompanied by a guest advisor.
• In the case of themed tours (in German), curators and experts guide guests to selected stations and exhibits in the exhibition on the basis of a content-related concept. These dates can also be found in the calendar of events. All other dates that are not listed there but can still be booked via the ticket store are guided tours.  

Each guided tour or visit lasts one hour. Admission is 6 euros, concessions 3 euros.

Book your ticket now.

Please note that the exhibition can only be visited via an accompanied tour or a themed tour. In the program overview for May (in German) all guided tours and accompanied visits are listed.