Museums · 2022
Ordinary NATOzism
Museums / Ordinary NATOzism
About the project
Two touch-screen applications for the exhibition “Ordinary NATOzism” at the Victory Museum: a chronicle of the Cold War and a map of NATO military operations in seven countries.
On 22 June 2022, the anniversary of the start of the Great Patriotic War, the exhibition “Ordinary NATOzism” opened at the Victory Museum on Poklonnaya Hill as a continuation of the exhibition “Ordinary Nazism”. It occupied the first-floor balcony of the Hall of Commanders and covered the policy of the North Atlantic Alliance from 1949 to 2022.
We made two touch-screen applications for the exhibition: a Cold War chronicle with biographies of its participants and an interactive map of NATO military operations. The work took place from 14 to 19 June 2022.
Year
2022
Industry
Museums
Scope of work
2 touch-screen applications: 11 Cold War events, 58 biographies, 7 countries on the map
Venue
Victory Museum, Hall of Commanders, Moscow
- 11
- events in the Cold War chronicle
- 58
- biographies of key figures
- 7
- countries on the map of NATO military operations
The task
The museum wanted to tell the history of the alliance and its military operations — the conflicts of the Cold War, the bombing of Yugoslavia, Libya and Syria, the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan — through dozens of notes and photographs. Visitors had to be able to choose what to read for themselves: a period, an event, a country, a person. All of it by the opening on 22 June.
What we did
“Cold War”
The chronicle is divided into two periods. The 1950s–60s: the Korean War, the Geneva Conference of 1955, the creation of the Warsaw Pact, the Suez Crisis, American aircraft in the skies over the USSR, the Berlin Crisis of 1961, the Cuban Missile Crisis. The 1970s–80s: the Vietnam War, NATO’s “Double-Track Decision”, the Reagan Doctrine, the end of the Cold War. Eleven events in all.
Each event has photographs, years and a note. The “Key figures” button opens biographies of the participants: 58 people in all, from Stalin, Truman and Kim Il-sung to Gorbachev and Bush Sr. The visitor follows the chain “period → events → event” and goes back a step using the navigation bar.
“Map of NATO aggression”
A world map with seven countries highlighted in red: Somalia (1993), Bosnia (1995), Yugoslavia (1999), Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), Libya (2011), Syria (2014). Tapping a country opens a window with a note on the operation and a strip of photographs, and each photograph can be opened full size. Yugoslavia is shown within its 1999 borders — including present-day Serbia and Montenegro.
How it is built
“Cold War” runs on a vertical touch screen: at the top are photographs of the event that can be swiped through; below are the heading, the years and the scrollable text of the note.
“Map of NATO aggression” is designed for a horizontal 1920×1080 screen: a vector world map over a background video.
Result
The museum extended the exhibition: first to 2 October, then to 31 December 2022, and later listed dates from 21 June 2023 to 31 December 2024. “Ordinary NATOzism” ran as a section of the exhibition “Ordinary Nazism”, which, according to the museum, had been visited by 1.4 million people by September 2023.
