TEO: This year you are presenting a new exhibition at the Cité des Sciences, which will then be touring internationally: Cave Journey, through the Chauvet Discovery. For this exhibition, your team has adopted a singular curatorial and design approach, where visitors are invited to step into the body and enter the minds of scientists on an archaeological site. As the curator of this exhibition, could you tell us where the touring exhibition design intentions stem from?
Christelle Guiraud: The idea for the exhibition came from the observation that in Europe there are no exhibitions entirely dedicated to how archaeological research is carried out on an excavation site. When you go to prehistory museums, they tell you what life was like in those days, what animals lived there, the fauna and flora, the living conditions, the interpretations of cave art. Visitors are told what researchers know, but not how they go about acquiring that knowledge. For Cave Journey, this was the real focus point for the exhibition’s curatorial team. Our purpose was to immerse audiences in the life and work of archaeological researchers, with a specific focus on the Chauvet cave. This aligns with the editorial lines of the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie, where we talk about how research is being done, and explore science where we least expect it.
Beyond that, a few years ago, during the 80th anniversary of the CNRS, the Universcience teams met the Chauvet Cave research team, sparking a dynamic exchange of mutual intellectual interest. This encounter made us want to tell the story of their work, and their team was highly motivated to take part in creating an exhibition.
What makes Chauvet a particularly interesting site of focus for this discovery?
Chauvet is a jewel of prehistory. It’s a place that has been preserved naturally due to the collapse of a cliff, a natural obstruction which has turned the site into a time capsule. It has never been open to the public. Everything inside dates from at least 21,500 years ago, with no trace of use since the Palaeolithic period. It’s an absolutely incredible place in terms of the wealth of remains found there, both with regards to their quantity and quality.
The year 2024 marked the 30th anniversary of the cave’s discovery. Thirty years fully dedicated to research, with very specific conditions: it is not permitted to excavate or move anything in this site, so as not to damage any of the remains. Furthermore, the high level of CO2 inside limits access. As a consequence, a single search campaign takes place over 4 weeks in March every year. This makes the Chauvet cave a fantastic site to explore how researchers do their work.
We wanted to make an exhibition that was totally interactive and hands-on to invite visitors to realise, with their bodies and their minds, what it means to work in a cave.
What does it mean to make visitors « feel like scientists in the body and in the mind »?
When the object of study is a cave, there are special research conditions. When researchers go out into the field, when they enter such a subterranean place, with no light and limited moving space, their bodies are engaged differently than if they were working at their benches in labs. With this specific cave, researchers are faced with very strict rules and are constrained in many ways: they have to carry their equipment up a 600m gradient cliff, bring their food and water on site, but consume it outside. They have to navigate narrow metallic footbridges, only 60 cm wide! They take pictures using a long rod and are not allowed to touch anything.
These particular conditions require scientists to be agile and adaptable, both physically and intellectually. That’s what we want visitors to connect with, while also understanding that once the initial frustration subsides, this research protocol has amazing advantages, allowing for everything to remain pristine and making it possible for research teams to continue discovering things.
This body and mind approach also allowed us to fulfil another objective. We were aiming to de-sacralise the figure of the researcher: even if these scientists are highly competent people who know a lot of things, in the end, they are men and women like you and me, and what they do is achievable. This angle was particularly important to us for our young audiences. We wanted them to be able to say to themselves ‘that could be me the palaeontologist, in the place of Philippe Fosse!’
To support visitor engagement along the visitor journey, did you build in interactivity for diverse audiences? Could you share an example of a key interactive moment you have integrated in the experience?
We wanted to make an exhibition that was totally interactive and hands-on to invite visitors to realise, with their bodies and their minds, what it means to work in a cave. We worked with two main strategies. One was to make sure everything was materialised on a 1:1 scale based on the real site and tools, to give an accurate idea of the volumes and conditions in which the scientists are actually working. We took particular reference from the set design of Lars von Trier’s film, Dogville (2003). The other principle was choosing to only work based on the researchers’ materials, pictures, tools and methodologies.
For example, to introduce ichnology, a branch of palaeontology that identifies animals from their footprints and hypothesises about their behaviour, we go through each step of the process. In a dedicated area, visitors have to find and observe the imprint on a scientific picture of the cave floor, draw the contours of the imprint like the researcher, compare it to other imprints using an archaeological interpretation key, and finally use a mathematics method in order to identify the species, all in a similar way to how palaeontologists would work. We used the scientists’ documents, data and images, trusting visitors would be able to understand the process by walking through the steps. And it works very well!
The Chauvet case is particularly unique in prehistoric research as it brings together a large interdisciplinary team.
You are also using a specific interactive sound device to very concretely show the way the acoustic scientists work in the cave. Could you tell us about this interactive and how acoustics are an interesting way of engaging visitors with cave science?
Archeo-acoustic is a relatively new and innovative subject-matter in the field of cave research. Since about the middle of the 20th century, researchers and archaeologists have wondered: were more cave paintings found in places where sound resonated well? Was this chamber a place where songs and rituals were performed? And were the paintings associated with such activities? To look into this, researchers are now able to create sound models of the caves as they were hundreds of years ago. The Chauvet research team is currently developing a model to recreate how sounds would have been heard in the cave 38,000 years ago – an extensive process expected to take at least five years. The exhibition features a bespoke archeo-acoustic station where, with the use of a digital sound model of the cave, visitors can test sound in different parts of the cave. They can even record their own voice and listen to it as if they were in the cave! That’s an interactive visitors of all ages have been engaging particularly well with.
The exhibition brings to light all the areas of expertise that come together to tell the stories of an archaeological site. Could you tell us about how the exhibition is bringing this multidisciplinary approach to light?
The Chauvet case is particularly unique in prehistoric research as it brings together a large interdisciplinary team, with archaeologists and palaeontologists, but also geomorphologists, archaeobotanists, paleoclimatologists, mathematicians, computer and digital scientists, acousticians, chemists, fire engineers, etc. The exhibition sheds light on these disciplines, sharing stories of research through the eyes of the researchers, to give visitors an understanding of how they work together, and how they’re experiencing this work – spending four weeks together in a field lab, sharing a living and working space. They already know about one another’s disciplines, questions, interests. They are in continuous dialogue, and together they hypothesise and go through shared data and overlapping maps, which we share with visitors. The exhibition shows how this collaborative process contributes to create new knowledge.
The various hands-on elements do not need to be disassembled, and their tables can simply be stored into racks like a cafeteria tray system.
The experience will be proposed as a touring exhibition internationally from July 2025. How has your team considered touring in the making of this exhibition?
From the outset, we designed this project as a travelling exhibition. Ease of use and a low carbon footprint were key commitments that strongly influenced both our design methodology and production approach. There is no set direction for the itinerary, we have four modular parts that can be arranged in any order, which makes it particularly adaptable for hosting teams. All the furniture can fold onto itself, with no need for crating. The various hands-on elements do not need to be disassembled, and their tables can simply be stored into racks like a cafeteria tray system. This set up is easy to use, cutting costs in terms of material use and build, and limiting the need for assembly teams. It saves time, money and materials.
We worked to create an experience that can engage all audiences aged nine and over, including families and schools. We integrated different levels of interpretation and access, which on one hand allow to go through all the various features easily, but also make it possible for others to go a step further, and make sure these various audiences can interact with each other. We will be sharing the results of a qualitative study so that hosting teams can have an insight into how visitor groups have been engaging in a unique manner with the experience.
The exhibition is currently open at the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie in Paris, until May 11 2025.
Exhibition mentioned
Cave journey, through the Chauvet discovery, by Universcience
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Christelle Guiraud
Christelle Guiraud is a museographer and exhibition curator at the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie, Universcience. She has worked in science museums for 25 years: 5 years at the Agora des Sciences in Marseille, 8 years at the Palais de la Découverte, then 12 years at Universcience, the institution that brings together the Palais de la Découverte and the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie.
Her areas of expertise include exhibition design and production, museography, project organisation and management, expert appraisals, and science teaching and outreach for adults and children. She is particularly interested in accessibility and in the transmission of science and development of museum education systems adapted to the largest audiences, with a particular attention to young audiences, and audiences with disabilities.