Kon-Tiki Museum (Norway) - request for memorabilia for tiki exhibit

I think a few of you might be interested in helping Norway's Kon-Tiki Museum with an upcoming exhibit on tiki, although I believe the request was meant for those in Norway. The original request came out 4 months ago. From the Kon-Tiki museum website ....

Help the Kon-Tiki Museum create an exciting exhibition!

If you have any Tiki memorabilia you would consider lending out, you could be part of next summer's exhibition at the Kon-Tiki Museum.

On 6th October Thor Heyerdahl would have turned 94. His world famous expeditions, which attempted to show that people had used the world's oceans as important means of communication as early as many thousands of years ago, thrilled an entire world and irritated many researchers. The Kon-Tiki expedition is probably the best known of these in the four corners of the world. The book about the expedition has been translated into more than 70 languages over the years, thanks in large part to the film of the expedition winning an Oscar in 1951.

A less discussed result of the Kon-Tiki expedition was the so-called Tiki trend.

The Tiki trend took off when American soldiers arrived home from the Pacific Ocean and brought with them souvenirs and tastes from Hawaii and other islands in the region. Tiki bars serving drinks that used pineapple and rum as the main ingredients were especially popular, as were Tiki restaurants that served food and had interiors inspired by the southern ocean.

The Kon-Tiki expedition and the popularity the book and film attained helped to spread the Tiki phenomenon in America and to other countries. When Heyerdahl later visited Easter Island his film and book, Aku-Aku, helped to revitalise this subculture. This also spread to Norway where for many years the Kon-Tiki restaurant in Sj�lyst, Oslo presented this culture and where in more recent times the Aku Aku bar in Gr�nerl�kka, Oslo has picked up the baton from the 1940s and 1960s and run with it.

The Tiki Effect exhibition at the Kon-Tiki Museum in the summer of 2009 (31 May -30 September) will show how this phenomenon arose and spread. We thought that many Norwegian homes must have Tiki memorabilia from the 1950s and 1960s, either from Norway or those collected by Norwegian sailors on their travels.

The Kon-Tiki Museum wants to borrow these memorabilia. The owners of memorabilia used in the exhibition will of course be invited to its opening along with friends or family. These memorabilia could be anything from menus to cocktail sticks and matchboxes from the Kon-Tiki restaurant on Sj�lyst, or from other Tiki bars and restaurants from around the world. They could be models of the Kon-Tiki raft you made when you were a child.

Perhaps you have cinema posters or advertising posters for the Kon-Tiki book or film, or one of the many objects, drinks or sweets that over the years bore the Kon-Tiki name?

If you have something you think the museum may be interested in, please contact:
Reidar Solsvik at the Kon-Tiki Museum
Tel: (+47) 23 08 67 76
Email: [email protected].

To see this announcement on the Kon-Tiki Museum website - with much more exciting pictures - visit http://www.kon-tiki.no/Ny/e_aapning.php and go to the Press/news heading.

[ Edited by: ikitnrev 2009-01-31 14:22 ]

I am glad that the museum is hip to the Tiki revival, museums need to do exhibits that draw in the crowd that otherwise sees them as stuffy institutions. I wonder if my pal Don Ryan is involved in this, he is in an advisory position to the place. He was the one that showed the BOT to Thor and reported a affirmative and positive reaction by the old viking back to me. :)

They need Stephen Crane menus, Kon Tiki hotel Phoenix matches, and other ephemera from the U.S., Europe was much less elaborate in examples of Kon Tiki fever.

Cool!

Kon-Tiki old Mexican comic book

They need Stephen Crane menus, Kon Tiki hotel Phoenix matches, and other ephemera from the U.S., Europe was much less elaborate in examples of Kon Tiki fever.

Maybe less elaborate here,you know, we prefer take a siesta rather than paying proper homage to Scandinavian explorers. But high Kon-Tiki fever nevertheless.

I´m going out of town for a few days.
A short trip to southern Spain. Not sun and beaches this time, I´m afraid.
But I will visit some of my favorites tiki bars and this place, where you can enjoy great Norwegian specialties:

Mr. Naufrago, drink a sangria for me!

From an album entirely devoted to Polynesia. The stickers came as gifts with chocolate candy.
Made in Spain

Kon Tiki Museum's got a Tiki Mug! We need to donate to the cause and get a new mug design for the show. I have a ton of stuff I can contribute, but I want it back. How does that work?

DC