Museum exhibitions offer a unique space for creating a three-dimensional experience of the systemic interconnectedness that characterizes the Anthropocene, as well as encouraging reflection and participatory discussion. The Deutsches Museum has decided to tackle the challenges of this new age head-on and become the first museum to create a major exhibition on the Anthropocene. While curating an exhibition, we also tackle the question of how to “curate” the planet in its literal sense of taking care of it and curing it.

As agents of knowledge and appropriators of technology, exhibitions (and most notably museum exhibitions) have played an important role in the early twentieth century, when gas and electricity, the quintessential modern energy sources, aimed to oust wood, coal, and peat while simultaneously competing intensely with each other.