Archives - International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum

To Heal a World
160 years of photography from the collections of the Red Cross

16.11.2021-24.04.2022

Humanitarian images entered people’s daily lives over a century ago and are now a fixture in today’s news. Such images often convey a sense of immediacy and certainty, setting a scene that allows for only one interpretation. Viewers think they fully understand the event in question without considering what lies just outside the frame. But the reality on the ground is always more complex than its representation, which is by nature merely a fragment.

To Heal a World presents, in a variety of ways, more than 600 images dating from 1850 to the present. They include both public images used to communicate about humanitarian crises and more confidential ones, once reserved for internal use. The works were carefully selected over the course of two years from a highly diverse […]

Concerned
30 Artists on Humanitarian Issues

Spring / Summer 2021

An exhibition produced by the International Museum of the Red Cross and Red Crescent in collaboration with the HEAD – Geneva, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Geneva Red Cross

Geneva is the global capital of humanitarian action. What impact does that have on the work of artists who trained here? And more generally, can art help us to better understand humanitarian issues? Since 2015, the annual Prix Art Humanité has provided new answers to those questions. The prize is sponsored by the Geneva School […]

IMAGINE
Reflections on Peace

16 September 2020 to 10 January 2021

In Imagine. Reflections on peace, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum has teamed up with the VII Foundation to explore the peace-building process and its outcome in Lebanon, Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia and Colombia: all places that have experienced drawn-out conflicts.

The signing of a peace accord between the opposing parties is only a first step. What happens next? How to rebuild what has been destroyed? What visible and invisible scars were left by years of conflict? How do neighbours who were once enemies learn to live together again? Renowned photojournalists who have explored these places […]

COVID-19 and Us
By Magnum Photos and you

Extended until 31 March, 2021

TAKE PART IN A NEW PROJECT AND LET’S BUILD IT TOGETHER!

To make sense of the complete changes caused by the pandemic, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum (MICR) is launching “ COVID-19 and Us “, an international participatory project, in partnership with the famous agency Magnum Photos. Photographers from all over the world will share with us their views on the pandemic, first […]

Posters unpacked
The exhibition is extended until July 26th!

From 2 October 2019 to 26 July 2020

In Posters unpacked, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum presents its rich collection of posters from all over the world. The Museum began collecting posters after it opened in 1988, with a steady stream of acquisitions and donations from National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies arriving since then. Today, the collection counts […]

Prison

From 6 February 2019 to 18 August 2019

“We too are the punishers”. This short yet powerful sentence forces us to stop and consider our shared responsibility for perpetuating a system that so regularly makes the headlines. With its bold and unconventional design, the exhibition looks at incarceration from all angles – from imprisonment and exclusion to detention conditions, social reintegration and restorative […]

Exile

14 March – 25 november 2018

Imagine fleeing your country and leaving behind your family, friends and everything familiar to travel across borders and demarcation lines by foot and by sea, headed toward lands unknown. That is the reality of exile. Over 300 images from the photojournalists of Magnum Photos tell the story of migration: walking, waiting, uncertainty, fear…and hope. Work […]

The fight against AIDS in images

4 April 2017 - 7 January 2018

With “The fight against AIDS in images”, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum invites you to explore more than 30 years of communication about the disease. The exhibition, which first appeared at the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum in Dresden, includes awareness campaign posters, works of art and films that illustrate just how challenging it was, […]

Teen Body Struggles

22 June 2016 - 8 January 2017

Teen Body Struggles takes a thoughtful look at teenage anorexia and eating disorders and explores our ideas about what constitutes the perfect female body. The exhibition is a bold encounter between worlds that rarely meet and an invitation to reconsider the relationship between the body, culture and illness. First put together in 2006 at the Musée […]

Disorder
Prix Pictet

2nd of March to 8 May 2016

“Our times are defined by disorder. […] Our mastery over manifold aspects of life has deluded us into thinking that we have bent the planet to our will. Yet the fragility of that assumption is exposed with each new pandemic, earthquake, tsunami or drought. With each passing day our illusion of order is shattered.” Kofi […]

Experiments with Truth:
Gandhi and Images of Nonviolence

15 April 2015 to 3 January 2016

Nonviolence immediately calls to mind a face, a smile, an easily recognizable figure: Mahatma Gandhi. In 1927 Gandhi published an autobiography entitled “My experiments with truth.” The title refers to satyagraha, the “force of truth,” the cornerstone of civil disobedience that he championed and exemplified throughout his life. A milestone of nonviolent thought and action, […]

TROP HUMAIN

07 May 2014 - 04 January 2015

While art often affords us moments of delight, it can also recall difficult times and testify to individuals’ suffering. For All too human. 20th and 21st century artists and suffering, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum and Mamco have come together to exhibit a selection of works that look at the suffering inflicted […]

Henry Dunant + Gustave Moynier : Friends and Foes

From 22 September 2010 to 8 May 2011

As fate had it that these two fellow protagonists who played a decisive role in founding the Red Cross disappeared the same year, it seems appropriate to hold a commemorative exhibition to retrace the parallel and intertwined paths of these two historical figures. If the name Henry Dunant is widely known in the whole world, […]

Humanity in War Frontline Photography since 1860

3 March – 25 July 2010

HUMANITY IN WAR is a photographic record of warfare over the last 150 years. From the American Civil War to the conflicts of the early twenty-first century, the photographer has been a constant presence, preserving moments of courage, dignity, defiance and hope amidst pain and suffering. The exhibition also traces the evolution of the International […]

MODEST Portraits and stories of women in the Middle East: Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Jordan, Syria, Gaza and the West Bank

23 September 2009 – 24 January 2010

From one country to another the photographs taken by reporter Alexandra Boulat (1962-2006) show the world Muslim women live in, together with the differences in their status and the roles they play: war victim, refugee, political militant, academic, TV anchorwoman, teacher at the women’s police academy or oriental baby-doll. These are portraits permeated by their […]

STIGMATA

from 4 March to 26 July 2009

In a world as overloaded with images and information as our own, how can we possibly continue to use photography as a means of talking about human suffering? Today’s photographers do not perceive their medium as a tool with which to illustrate reality or unveil the world. The 19th century took ample care of that. […]

WALLS BETWEEN PEOPLE

from 24 September 2008 to 25 January 2009

Open from 10:00 to 17:00, except Tuesday – admission free Throughout history, human beings have built fortifications to protect themselves from “barbarians”. Coldly designed on the basis of military maps, these eight modern walls illustrate a specific geopolitical divide: – The Demilitarised Zone between North and South Korea – The Green Line that divides the […]

IN-SECURITY the nuclear dilemma

27 February to 27 July 2008

Open from 10:00 to 17:00, except Tuesday – admission free There isn’t a day that goes by without us hearing the word nuclear being associated with energy or defence. Partisans and critics affront each other, analysing the past and presenting future scenarios. Whilst other positive applications of nuclear science should not be ignored, it is […]

GRAND PRIX OF THE CATASTROPHIC

from 3 October 2007 to 27 January 2008

In 2006, natural disasters affected 134 million people and cost 35 billion dollars… Three weeks after the tsunami, over 700 million dollars had been released. Several months later, earthquake victims in Pakistan were dying for want of means to help them… Every dollar spent on prevention today could save four dollars on reconstruction tomorrow… These […]

FIELD(S) From Solferino to Guantanamo

7 March - 5 August 2007

Humanitarian action would decidedly not be the same without photography and its power to spark instant emotion, its snapshot of a reality that words cannot render. Whether by historical happenstance or modern-day necessity, the Red Cross was founded at the same time as the first successful attempts were made at photography. The ICRC is therefore […]

CAMBODIA 1975-1979 Chronicle of a genocide

13 September 2006 - 28 January 2007

In January 1979, Vietnamese troops entered Phnom Penh and routed the Khmer Rouge, putting an end to a regime that had cost the lives of over 1.7 million Cambodians in four years, or nearly one quarter of the pre-1975 population. What brought the Khmer Rouge to power? Where did their murderous utopia spring from? This […]

THE BELFAST MAZE Photographs by Donovan Wylie Film by Amanda Dunsmore

15 February - 23 July 2006

For 24 years, the Maze Prison played a unique role in the Northern Ireland conflict, ultimately coming to symbolize that period in the country’s history. Built in 1976 to hold terrorists and political prisoners, the Maze is an extreme example of rational design. It was laid out on a gigantic scale for the systematic isolation […]

WAR United States – Afghanistan - Iraq

16 Mars 2005 - 15 January 2006

The war against terror waged in retaliation for the attacks of 11 September has mobilized countless journalists on the frontlines at Ground Zero, in Afghanistan and in Iraq. So why do we have the vague feeling that the human reality of the fighting, the violence and suffering that are part of war, have escaped the […]

HELP Profession: Humanitarian Worker

22 September 2004 - 23 January 2005

Revolted by the images transmitted to us day after day from conflict zones, at one time or another we all ask ourselves this simple but crucial question: what can I do about it? Everyone has his own response: professional or associative, ad hoc or ongoing, local or global. Humanitarian action, which was long considered to […]

CARL DE KEYZER - ZONA Siberian Prison Camps

17 March - 18 July 2004

Zona: Siberian slang for prison. In 1950, more than 12 million people, most of them political prisoners, were being held in the gulags described by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. There are still 135 gulags today, holding over one million prisoners under ordinary law, many of them serving long prison sentences. Between 2000 and 2002, Carl de Keyzer […]

SIDE BY SIDE OR FACE TO FACE

17 September 2003 - 25 January 2004

Israelis and Palestinians: 50 years of photography by JEAN MOHR Images that bear witness to the essential facets of the human condition: this is what sets photographer Jean Mohr apart. In an exhibition that echoes humanitarian endeavour, taking an expansive view of other people and the world, every one of his exceptional images is bathed […]

ALL ABOUT BLOOD

9 April - 10 August 2003

“When shed in war, it infuriates and repels; when coursing through our veins, it gives pleasure and life: it stands in testimony to both life and horror. It is blood, that vital fluid, man’s companion in all aspects of his life – physical, ideological and even spiritual.” Arlette Farge, historian, 1988 Blood – that familiar […]

THE CAMPS

11 September - 8 December 2002.

Photographs of the Nazi concentration and extermination camps, 1933-1999 “Forgetting extermination is part of extermination.” (Jean-Luc Godard) We have all seen pictures of the concentration camps, mainly those taken when the camps were liberated. Most of the best-known photographs were massively disseminated, but usually without a caption, with no indication of the date or the […]

FOOTNOTES TO THE GREAT WAR

23 January - 11 August 2002.

100 objects from the Historial de la Grande Guerre in Péronne (Somme, France) “To remember is to live” (Les Annales, 14 January 1917) A seemingly random assortment of objects, they remind us of a poem by Prévert. Whether military, utilitarian, decorative or symbolic, whether of British, French or German origin, the items gathered here reflect […]

APOCALYPSE 01

Du 21 mars au 25 novembre 2001

Installé à la fin de sa vie à Heiden (Suisse), Henry Dunant y mène une existence retirée jusqu’à l’attribution du prix Nobel de la Paix en 1901. Fasciné par le livre de Daniel et l’Apocalypse, il réalise quatre diagrammes dans lesquels il explique sa conception prophétique de l’histoire. Dunant croit alors profondément à l’imminence de […]

LE SILENCE

Du 30 septembre 2000 au 14 janvier 2001

Rwanda Project 1994-2000 de Alfredo Jaar une exposition de l’Association ART for the World, Genève L’exposition de l’artiste chilien Alfredo Jaar consiste en une série de trois installations d’images prises par l’artiste au cours des semaines passées au Rwanda, en Ouganda et au Zaîre en août 1994, durant la période qui a suivi le génocide. […]

PLAYGROUNDS & TOYS

Du 30 septembre au 29 Octobre 2000

Une exposition de l’Association ART for the World, Genève. Playgrounds & Toys est une manifestation internationale et itinérante pour la création de Parcs d’enfants (Playgrounds) et de Jouets éducatifs (Toys) en particulier pour les enfants qui souffrent de l’injustice sociale et vivent dans des conditions inadmissibles. 30 artistes, architectes et designers venant du monde entier, […]

"OPERATION BALKANS: YOUNG PEOPLE TAKE ACTION"

From 10 March to 20 August 2000

Between April and June 1999, ten young people from the Geneva Red Cross mobilized to set up an operation to help victims of the Balkans conflict. Thanks to the support given by 800 volunteer workers, 450 tonnes of relief supplies (food, hygiene items and clothing) were collected, dispatched and distributed on the spot. The exhibition […]

Exhibitions Temporary exhibition

To Heal a World
160 years of photography from the collections of the Red Cross

Concerned
30 Artists on Humanitarian Issues

IMAGINE
Reflections on Peace

COVID-19 and Us
By Magnum Photos and you

TAKE PART IN A NEW PROJECT AND LET’S BUILD IT TOGETHER!

Posters unpacked
The exhibition is extended until July 26th!

Prison

Exile

The fight against AIDS in images

Teen Body Struggles

Disorder
Prix Pictet

Experiments with Truth:
Gandhi and Images of Nonviolence

TROP HUMAIN

Henry Dunant + Gustave Moynier : Friends and Foes

Humanity in War Frontline Photography since 1860

MODEST Portraits and stories of women in the Middle East: Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Jordan, Syria, Gaza and the West Bank

STIGMATA

WALLS BETWEEN PEOPLE

IN-SECURITY the nuclear dilemma

GRAND PRIX OF THE CATASTROPHIC

FIELD(S) From Solferino to Guantanamo

CAMBODIA 1975-1979 Chronicle of a genocide

THE BELFAST MAZE Photographs by Donovan Wylie Film by Amanda Dunsmore

WAR United States – Afghanistan - Iraq

HELP Profession: Humanitarian Worker

CARL DE KEYZER - ZONA Siberian Prison Camps

SIDE BY SIDE OR FACE TO FACE

ALL ABOUT BLOOD

THE CAMPS

FOOTNOTES TO THE GREAT WAR

APOCALYPSE 01

LE SILENCE

PLAYGROUNDS & TOYS

"OPERATION BALKANS: YOUNG PEOPLE TAKE ACTION"

Exhibitions

Opening Hours

Exhibitions Temporary exhibition

To Heal a World160 years of photography from the collections of the Red Cross

Concerned30 Artists on Humanitarian Issues

IMAGINEReflections on Peace

COVID-19 and UsBy Magnum Photos and you

TAKE PART IN A NEW PROJECT AND LET’S BUILD IT TOGETHER!

Posters unpackedThe exhibition is extended until July 26th!

Prison

Exile

The fight against AIDS in images

Teen Body Struggles

DisorderPrix Pictet

Experiments with Truth:Gandhi and Images of Nonviolence

TROP HUMAIN

Henry Dunant + Gustave Moynier : Friends and Foes

Humanity in War Frontline Photography since 1860

MODEST Portraits and stories of women in the Middle East: Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Jordan, Syria, Gaza and the West Bank

STIGMATA

WALLS BETWEEN PEOPLE

IN-SECURITY the nuclear dilemma

GRAND PRIX OF THE CATASTROPHIC

FIELD(S) From Solferino to Guantanamo

CAMBODIA 1975-1979 Chronicle of a genocide

THE BELFAST MAZE Photographs by Donovan Wylie Film by Amanda Dunsmore

WAR United States – Afghanistan - Iraq

HELP Profession: Humanitarian Worker

CARL DE KEYZER - ZONA Siberian Prison Camps

SIDE BY SIDE OR FACE TO FACE

ALL ABOUT BLOOD

THE CAMPS

FOOTNOTES TO THE GREAT WAR

APOCALYPSE 01

LE SILENCE

PLAYGROUNDS & TOYS

"OPERATION BALKANS: YOUNG PEOPLE TAKE ACTION"

Exhibitions

Opening Hours

To Heal a World
160 years of photography from the collections of the Red Cross

Concerned
30 Artists on Humanitarian Issues

IMAGINE
Reflections on Peace

COVID-19 and Us
By Magnum Photos and you

Posters unpacked
The exhibition is extended until July 26th!

Disorder
Prix Pictet

Experiments with Truth:
Gandhi and Images of Nonviolence