My first time at … NONAM

A narrow staircase leads to the current special exhibition ‘At the Ice Edge: Travelling in North Greenland’ (until 28 June 2026). A father, a photographer, travels to Greenland with his adult son, a filmmaker. The two Swiss men, Markus and Nils, use their cameras to capture, from their perspective, how people live there: how young men become hunters, how animals are hunted, and the challenges of everyday life. On display are numerous photographs as well as a short documentary film.

Even without understanding the subtitles, the film is accessible to a child. The vast icy landscapes are reminiscent of scenes from picture books. At the same time, familiar things appear: a child cycling through the snow, recognisable packaging, the barking of dogs. Except that here they are not lap dogs, but sled dogs racing across the ice.

It is precisely this mix that makes the exhibition so powerful for children: It depicts a reality of life that differs significantly from their own, without exoticising it – whilst at the same time providing enough points of reference for younger children to find their bearings.

One floor up is the collection display. Fascinating, but less accessible for younger children: much of it requires reading skills, the sound installations in the dark are a bit spooky in places, and the portraits of various artists are in English and rather lengthy. If you explain the content yourself to your increasingly impatient companions, you must be careful not to inadvertently fall into simplistic or stereotypical representations.

For schoolchildren and adults, however, the collection items from various regions and centuries offer plenty of starting points for engaging more deeply with different indigenous cultures. The North American Native Museum visibly addresses this question of perspective: it incorporates contemporary Indigenous viewpoints and critically contextualises historical collections. In this way, the narrative does not remain confined to a purely European perspective.

North American Native Museum, Seefeldstrasse 317, 8008 Zurich
Tue to Sat, 1 pm to 5 pm
Sun, 10 am to 5 pm