Explora

Explora Museum, exterior view

Explora Museum, exhibition

The Explora Museum in Frankfurt am Main was a private museum . Mainly three-dimensional images , optical illusions and physical experiments were exhibited . The museum closed in late November 2016 after 21 years. The building was sold and will be demolished in 2019.

museum

The museum exhibited three-dimensional images using various techniques. The exhibits included

Anaglyph images , i.e. stereo images in red-green technology
Anamorphoses , ie “distorted” drawings that can only be recognized with aids
Holograms
three-dimensional representations with interferences
three-dimensional representations with lamella technology
three-dimensional representations with lenticular images
Puzzles
QR codes - in addition to Europe's largest QR code, the museum showed various uses of QR codes in an interactive science center and other technologies.

In addition, mathematical thinking tasks , mechanical, acoustic and optical experiments were presented in a wide variety of exhibits .

In addition, Gerhard O. Stief has been running the Museum of the Third Dimension in Dinkelsbühl since 1987 .

location

The museum was housed in a bunker opposite the Glauburg School in the rear part of Glauburgplatz on Schwarzburgstrasse .

building

The air raid shelter was built between 1940 and 1943 for civil defense . The balustrade and the false windows as well as the slate roof served as camouflage against the Allied aerial reconnaissance . The 2.15 m thick walls and the 2 m thick roof made of reinforced concrete offered a high level of protection against the Allied air raids on Frankfurt am Main . At the end of the war , the building was used by the Wehrmacht as the headquarters of the Frankfurt site.

After the war, bombed-out Frankfurters were temporarily housed here. The building later served as the headquarters of the Frankfurter Kreditanstalt . As a result, the bunker was used by various associations and at the same time was used as a civil defense bunker during the Cold War .

After the end of the Cold War after 1989 there was no longer any need for civil protection and the bunker was released from its civil protection link. In 1995 the building was sold to the private owner who ran the museum there from April 1, 1994.

In the period from 2019 to 2021, the bunker is now to be demolished and replaced by a residential building, supplemented by social facilities and restaurants.

criticism

In January 2016, the museum came under fire after a short message had been distributed via the house's Twitter account that disparagingly dealt with the current refugee crisis . The city of Frankfurt subsequently distanced itself from the statement made by the museum director, and the Hessen Family Card ended the collaboration. The heirs of the artist MC Escher , whose works were exhibited in the Explora Museum, pointed out that he had always stayed away from politics.