Magic mushroom: Creature comforts in a museum

Berlin – Visitors to the Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart are being given an opportunity to spend the night among 12 reindeer, 24 canaries, eight mice and two flies.

The event is part of artist Carsten Höller’s Soma installation. Soma is a drink based on an Amanita mushroom from the second millennium BC, said to have healing powers. ‘What role is science given in our society, and what role myth?’ asks Höller.

To find some of the answers, Höller has constructed an expansive ‘living picture’, a symmetrical field divided into two along its centre line, featuring a curious collection of creatures and giant mushrooms. Visitors can sign up to sleep on a specially designed mushroom-shaped platform looking over the exhibition.

For another example of a museum where visitors can stay the night, read about The Sleepover at the Serpentine gallery in London in our Conviviality Culture report.