The story of the exhibition began on April 2009 after Luis Ferreiro, Musealia’s director, received as a birthday gift the book Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl. A few months earlier, his brother Jesús had died suddenly at the age of 25.
Frankl’s personal crossroads, his profound and sincere pain at the situation he was going through, prompted Ferreiro to reflex on the idea of creating a traveling exhibition about the history of Auschwitz. It was a necessity born out of discovering something that needed to be shared with as many people as possible, and to express it in the only way he felt Musealia could: in an exhibition.
Luis Ferreiro
Director of The Exhibition
With the constant and decisive support of José Antonio Múgica and María Teresa Aguirre, the producers of the project in Musealia, experts dotted all round the world were united to work under the guidance and leadership of Ferreiro to join Musealia’s team in this project that took 7 years to develop.
After the team was built and the core of the narrative of the exhibition had been stablished, conversations began with the Auschwitz- Birkenau State Museum about Musealia’s idea and the project itself.
Discussions that, over the years, resulted in a much more extensive agreement than initially planned, transforming the exhibition into a co-production and an unprecedented collaboration that led Musealia to lead a project that would gather, for the first time in history, the support of 20 leading institutions and private collections from around the world to create the first traveling exhibition on Auschwitz.
An extensive work, involving the creation of the narrative, architecture, museography, design of educational and graphic materials, conservation of collections and much more, which Musealia is proud to present in Simi Valley (California) at the Ronald Reagan Library (RRPL) thanks to the collaboration with NEON and World Heritage Exhibitions (WHE), and the support of the host, Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute.
