Annoucements
29 October 2021
Everest – A New Centenary Exhibition for the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG)
We are delighted to announce that we are working with the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) on a new centenary exhibition. The exhibition focuses on the first European organised attempts to explore and summit Everest in the 1920s.
The story will be told through the films of Captain John Noel produced during the 1922 and 1924 expeditions. His films became the first footage of Tibet seen by Western audiences.
The Society explained that the exhibition will ‘explore how film helped create the popular image of Everest and how subsequent research on the films has identified elements of the Everest expeditions that are not well known, including the role of local knowledge, the making and commercialisation of the films, and the context and uses of expeditionary film today’.
We are developing an exhibition that reframes these first expeditions to Everest, using Noel’s films as the lens to do this. They are the window the West looked through to imagine this wonder of nature.
Jack Smurthwaite, Content Designer
The exhibition will take visitors behind the camera to look at the context of how these images were made and consumed by Western audiences. While the films will be the star of the show, they will be displayed alongside material from the Society’s wider Collections, including artefacts that accompanied the expedition teams.
The Everest centenary exhibition will be on display in the Society’s Pavilion from early October 2022 until January 2023.
Images: Royal Geographical Society
