Electric !

A high voltage exhibition

Roll up, roll up! Welcome to MUMONS, where electricity puts on one fairground-worthy show! Rare instruments, techniques, great discoveries, cutting-edge research and contemporary debates: the exhibition Electric! takes you on a truly immersive and sensory journey. A scientific exhibition… With a little touch of magic! And if you’re brave enough, a little birdie tells us a tarot reader is hiding somewhere in the museum, waiting to read your future…  

A high voltage exhibition

During your visit, we urge you to try to keep a cool head amidst the dizzying charm of our scientific collections. The Wimshurst machine, the Gramme dynamo, the Oudin coil, the Crookes tube, the Ruhmkorff coil… With their jaw dropping designs, super-sized dimensions, and more than a few tricks under the hood, these rare items are sure to give you goosebumps!  

Restored, buffed and polished for the occasion, more than fifty objects have been taken out of the UMONS and Wallonia-Brussels Federation archives to tell their story.  

The “electricity fairy” and Frankenstein

Listen up, young and old: here, you’ll be hearing “ooohs” and “aaaahs” from every direction!  And perhaps, as you meander through the corridors, a little voice saying: “Hey, Grandpa, is that how electricity worked back in your day?”  

For this exhibition, physician Pierre Gillis, historian Pauline Tisthoud and art historian Romane Duculot have put their heads together and blurred the lines between applied sciences, humanities and art, to tell us the story of how this invisible force transformed, and continues to transform, the world as we know it.   

From some very #abracadabra magic tricks by 18th century electricians to scholarly cat fights—#sparksfly—past three centuries of research to try and tame the “electric fairy.” History provides the drama, and you’ve got a front row seat.  

Families, school students, experts, fans, curious souls… Whoever you are, you’ll be magnetised by wild experiments, animated films, and astonishing stories… Not to mention the mind-blowing experience of stepping into our very own cloud chamber, or digging for Frankenstein’s smartphone.  

Rooted in our current era

As a wise man once said, “Study the past, if you would divine the future.” 

The exhibition Electric! has a certain avant-garde attitude about it: it is in step, if not a step ahead, of the current zeitgeist. Grounded in the current state of the world, it opens up the discussion between UMONS experts on contemporary issues: learn about the wild efforts of deep sea and asteroid exploration, dive into the global history of technology, and clue up on all the hottest cross-disciplinary debates, at the intersection of energy, climate, environment, geostrategy and politics.