Since its inception, Semmel Exhibitions has reached an audience of more than 10 million people worldwide with its travelling exhibitions. It has built a strong international network within museums, science centres, cultural venues and the creative industries.
The firm currently has four major touring exhibitions on the go: Disney100: The Exhibition, Marvel: Universe of Super Heroes, Tutankhamun: His Tomb and His Treasures, and Spider-Man: Beyond Amazing – The Exhibition.
Christoph Scholz, director of exhibitions and international projects, spoke to blooloop from the coffee shop at Union Station in Kansas City, where Spider-Man: Beyond Amazing – The Exhibition has just opened.
“Semmel Exhibitions is a division of Semmel Concerts, one of the top 10 promoters of live music and live entertainment in the world,” he explains:
“We started back in 2008 with a production called Tutankhamun: His Tomb and His Treasures, a replica exhibit. This is still touring after 15 years, with three units worldwide. It is currently on display in Warsaw, Poland, and in Columbus, Ohio. After a few years of focusing solely on King Tut, as we call him, in 2018 we added a production called Marvel: Universe of Super Heroes. That has been touring the USA and Canada ever since.
“It’s open in Charlotte, North Carolina right now, at a Science Museum called Discovery Place.”
Celebrating anniversaries
The Spider-Man: Beyond Amazing exhibition is, he says, an interesting concept:
“We produced this show last year as a kind of pop-up to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the original Spider-Man character, Peter Parker. Sixty years on, everyone can be Spider-Man or Spider-Woman.”
The latest Spiderverse movie, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, came out in cinemas on 2 June.
“Everybody’s very excited,” comments Scholz. “The exhibition will go on tour now in the United States. Our big production this year is Disney100: The Exhibition. This launched in mid-February in Philadelphia at the Franklin Institute and in mid-April in Munich at the Olympic Park. It will then go to London and Chicago later this year, before touring the world, hopefully, for the next five years or so.”
In short:
“This is what we do. We are a team of 13 people working within Semmel Concerts, taking care of our touring properties. Now and again, we also act as a local presenter for exhibitions in Germany and Austria. For example, we hosted, as local promoter the Europe premiere of Harry Potter: The Exhibition in Vienna from December to March.”
Semmel Exhibitions in a digital world
In a digital age, where everyone has access to immersive media at the touch of a screen, what is the appeal of exhibitions of this type?
“I think we all need a counterweight to the digital world,” Scholz contends. “The appeal is the human stories. For instance, stories of discoverers like Howard Carter, the British archaeologist who discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun. This is an Indiana Jones story in itself – or there is Marvel.”
“Yes, Marvel is one of the mightiest media houses now, a dominating force in global pop culture. But in the end, it is also a story of two underdogs, Jewish artists, back in New York in the 1920s, 30s, 40s, and 50s, who were involved in a deeply creative scene. They were on the brink of giving up.
“Stan Lee and his creative partners, including Steve Ditko, had one last shot, so to speak. And they came up with the Avengers, which was a completely genre-changing thing at that time. It is these stories which we tell via video, through text, through artefacts.”
Creating authentic exhibits
Additionally, highlighting a trend that is often labelled as a desire for ‘authenticity’, he observes:
“We humans are still obsessed with what I sometimes call fetish objects. We have these trends where people pay tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of euros for, let’s say, an original sealed video cassette of Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky, or an original, sealed first edition of a Super Mario game, and that is absurd to a degree.
“In the exhibitions, which should certainly also show historic artefacts of significance, we humans still like to connect one-on-one with the gown worn by a famous actress in a Marvel or Disney exhibit, or an Egyptian artefact that we know is 3000 years old. That’s the appeal, and it’s an appeal that will never die.”
He outlines the creative process that goes into making an exhibition:
“It always needs to start with a core idea. The reconstruction of the tomb of Tutankhamun; 80 years of Marvel history; 100 years of Disney. A single artist like Van Gogh is always of interest. The David Hockney exhibition in Britain right now is a beautiful exhibit. It is one of the most original, immersive concepts I’ve seen.
“Either we come up with these core ideas ourselves because we work in entertainment: our profession is to sell tickets, and we need to come up with a new musical or a new concept tour or a new exhibition idea constantly. Or people come to us. Disney reached out to us in a pitch. They invited probably five companies worldwide to submit ideas for a Disney 100 exhibition, and we won that pitch by the end of 2019, or early 2020.
“Once that general decision is made, then the creative process starts with us as the producer.”
Working in partnership
Sometimes it is a curator who comes up with the project:
“The Walt Disney Archives is a huge department within the Walt Disney Company, staffed by archivists, curators and all kinds of museum professionals, so they curated the Disney exhibition. For Marvel, we hired an outside curator, Professor Ben Saunders and his creative partner, Patrick A. Reed, who have a track record of curating comic book exhibitions in the United States.
“When you stage a new music or a new show, you hire your choreographer, your lighting designer and so on. We go through this process, as well. An exhibition needs a lighting designer and a video designer. With exhibitions, there is always a lot of research to do, so we often work with editors, and sometimes with journalists, to contextualise the artefacts.”
“By the end of the process, we will have spent a few million euros – or dollars, depending on what the project is – and we hope that people will like it.”
However, he points out:
“As with any musical or film or book, at the end of the day, it is the audience who will decide.”
In terms of who that audience is, he says it can be anyone between the ages of nine to 99:
“We do mass-market entertainment; we are mainstream,” he explains. “We are good at what we do, and our exhibitions appeal to a family audience.”
Semmel Exhibitions helps museums to extend their reach
The exhibitions can be a powerful way for a venue to extend its demographic reach. In the US, particularly, Scholz observes, the exhibitions tend to extend the audiences of the institutions they work with:
“We have this wonderful network of science centres, and we also have general venues like, say, Union Station in Kansas City, that host, probably every two or every three years, what is called a blockbuster exhibit. They do this mainly as revenue drivers, but also to widen the demographic; to say, ‘We are not just Union Station or a science museum. We have a Harry Potter exhibit, or a Marvel exhibit, or a King Tut exhibit.’”
The same is not invariably true, however, elsewhere:
“In Europe and other parts of the world, it is so-so. Right now, we have Disney100 in the Exhibition Hall of the historic Olympic Park in Munich. The park is a beautiful development, and very busy. It has festivals all year long; the big music stars perform there. I wouldn’t really say that we add to the footfall or the audience of these places. So, it depends.”
New Tutankhamun exhibition
Tutankhamun has been captivating audiences since his tomb was discovered in 1922.
“King Tut is the Rolling Stones of the exhibition world,” Scholz says:
“The tomb was discovered in 1922. In 1924, two years after the discovery, the first replica exhibition took place in the old grammar school in Hull, in Northern England. Some of those objects are still on display in Hull: you can go there and see them, over a hundred years later.”
In 1961, a small selection of original artefacts started to tour the world, including the iconic Golden Funeral Mask. The tour continued, uninterrupted, for 20 years, visiting many countries. The term ‘blockbuster exhibition’ was coined in London in 1976 to describe the 1.6 million people flocking to see the Tutankhamun exhibition at the British Museum.
“Fast forward until our exhibition today,” Scholz says. “It is probably the most complete reconstruction ever produced, rooted firmly in the Howard Carter/ Lord Carnarvon story.
“We have an audio tour, which is almost like a radio play, where we have three narrators: Howard Carter himself; we took inspiration from his diaries, the role of a narrator, and the role of an Egyptologist. These three voice actors guide you through the exhibition and the discovery. Semmel Exhibitions has now been on tour with the show for 15 years.”
Working with an Egyptology expert
Dr Zahi Hawass, former secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities and minister of antiquities, is an internationally renowned archaeologist, scholar, and Egyptologist.
An author and lecturer, he has made several major discoveries throughout his career, including the Tombs of the Pyramid Builders at Giza, the Valley of the Golden Mummies at Bahariya Oasis, and two previously unknown Old Kingdom pyramids, one near the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza, and one belonging to a queen of King Teti at Saqqara.
In addition to many other discoveries of significance, in 2021 he announced that he and his team had discovered the ‘Lost golden city of Luxor’, the 3,400-year-old royal city built by Amenhotep III (grandparent of King Tut), and abandoned by his heretic son, Akhenaten: a city containing well-preserved remains.
A notable research effort led and managed by Dr Hawass is the fascinating Egyptian Mummy Project (EMP), which has used modern forensic techniques such as CT and DNA analysis to answer questions about the royal mummies. Some of the most important discoveries that Dr Hawass has made through the EMP are his identification of the mummy of Queen Hatshepsut, the uncovering of the family of King Tutankhamun, and solving the mystery of the murder of Ramesses III.
Semmel Exhibitions and Zahi Hawass
Dr Hawass’s support for the Semmel Tutankhamun: His Tomb and His Treasures exhibition is, therefore, significant.
“When Christoph takes this exhibition to a new city, I like to give a lecture on archaeology and my discoveries, since I believe this to be the best educational exhibit on Tutankhamun I have ever seen,” he tells blooloop:
“The objects are made beautifully; they are exact copies, and I’m impressed that Christoph has been able to educate millions of people through this exhibition since it began. This is why I only support Semmel’s exhibition, rather than any others. I give lectures in each city and talk to the media.”
In terms of authenticity, the fact the exhibition uses replica objects means there is no risk of priceless antiquities becoming damaged or lost. It also means people can see the tomb exactly as it was at that moment of discovery.
“It’s incredible to see crowds of schoolchildren coming to see these objects,” Hawass comments. “It’s a compelling exhibit. It explores the story of a boy who became a king, connecting people through these excellent replicas to the authentic tomb, the objects, and their history.”
Dr. Hawass’s plans for the immediate future, once his current lecture series is concluded, are to continue his excavations in the Golden City, and to search for the tomb of Queen Nefertiti.
New technologies
The Semmel Exhibitions team use the latest technologies to interpret exhibits. Scholz comments:
“Come to our Disney100 exhibition, and you will probably see the world’s first truly immersive exhibit, where we don’t just use video mapping, but stage artefacts in a very interesting way that lets them shine in a new context. If you see a concept production from 20 years ago, it looks a little old-fashioned; the same with a movie, the same with an exhibition.”
“I think you simply need to use whatever new technology is available and speak the design language of your time. Some subjects – the eternal ones such as King Tut, don’t demand too much technology, but with IP, you have to be ready to keep things fresh constantly. The audience expects it.
“If you design a Marvel exhibit or a Disney exhibit in this highly loaded media environment we inhabit with Netflix, with experiences, with immersive shows, with social media, you are lost if you don’t embrace the latest technology and trends. With Disney, we are adding little manmade artefacts as we speak in Philadelphia and Munich, otherwise, the audience would probably be a little disappointed.”
What’s next for Semmel Exhibitions?
Exhibitions have changed in terms of perspective:
“The interesting question is, ‘What is history?’ Philosophers and thinkers have thought a lot about it, asking, ‘What is old?’ Some 10, 15 years ago, when you went to an exhibition, you often had a situation that the story stopped 20, 25 years back in the past, and the exhibitions were relatively static: a retrospective about a fashion designer, or an exhibition about an important contemporary artist. There was always that aura of history. Exhibitions were essentially retrospective.
“Recently, I think exhibitions have become much more about now: that is my takeaway. While they can also be retrospective – 100 years of Disney, and 80 years of Marvel are retrospective – they are also more ‘now’: the audience sees it in a ‘now’ way, and from a more current perspective than would previously have been the case. They are much more than retrospective.
“Technology plays a role, but technology is not content.”
He adds:
“Exhibitions always come with a few what I disrespectfully call childhood diseases in the first city, so we are currently working on resolving the trivial childhood diseases of our Disney100 show. It’s always a creative process. So, this is what is keeping me busy right now.”
Concerning the future, he says:
“We have a completely new Marvel exhibition in the pipeline. The Marvel Universe is so dynamic that we need new stories. This one will launch in December. We have the launch of Disney100 in London and Chicago in October and will celebrate the actual anniversary of The Walt Disney Company in October.”
Top image: Mickey Mouse photo opportunity in The Magic of Sound and Music gallery at Disney100: The Exhibition. © Disney
