6 March 2008 – 2 November 2008

Happiness

When approaching the topic of happiness, one enters the immediate epicenter of the human condition. For the pursuit of happiness is almost a synonym for the question of a successful life per se.

Today, at the beginning of the 21st century, the theme of happiness has practically flooded our everyday life and has become the omnipresent object of a broad spectrum of research fields. At the same time, our society has made a program out of the obsession with self-esteem, in the sense of individual optimization of happiness.



The exhibition Happiness propounds the idea that happiness is a basic anthropological constant of human life, but opposes the reigning dictatorship of happiness and its easily consumed ideologies, which it submits to a critical examination. The exhibition pleads for liberating happiness from the currently dominant, too narrowly hedonistic categories of thought. It regards itself as a laboratory for an expanded concept of happiness and investigates happiness as a synonym for love, freedom, humanity, security, health, faith, ritual, contentedness, nostalgia, homeland, and the absence of anxiety and violence. Beyond that, the exhibition contends that happiness cannot be imagined without antagonistic feelings like pain, grief, loss, or unhappiness and that the latter are not breakdowns in the system.



Science, art, and scenography encounter each other in an innovative, productive process in 32 thought and perception rooms; the exhibition thereby presents these examples of the various facets of happiness. The rooms form a matrix through which the three main thematic levels are spanned as a guiding network:

1. Happiness in the Body; 2. Happiness in Society; 3. Heterotopias of Happiness

Address

Deutsches Hygiene Museum Dresden
Lingnerplatz 1
1069 Dresden
phone +49 351 484 60
http://www.dhmd.de

Opening Hours

Tuesday-Sunday, Holiday 10 a.m. - 6 p.m., closed on Monday.

Description of the Museum

The seven theme scopes of the permanent exhibition treat aspects of human life that are always connected to the experience of daily life of the visitor.

Since december 2005, the Kindermuseum (children's museum) complements the permanent exhibiton, giving children the opportunity to experience all their senses.

Within 10 days
starting exhibitions
ending exhibitions