When the Museum Becomes a Group: Stapferhaus’s Experiment in Belonging

How a Swiss museum partnered with a healthcare clinic to create a space where strangers could explore what it means to connect.

There’s a question that sits at the heart of contemporary public life: in a world that feels increasingly fragmented, how do we move from “me” to “we”? For the Stapferhaus in Lenzburg, Switzerland, that question became not just a curatorial theme but the basis for an unusually intimate experiment — one that asked thirty strangers to sit in a circle, without a script or a plan, and see what happened.

An Unlikely Collaboration

The Stapferhaus describes itself as a place for encounter and dialogue. Its current exhibition, Health: An Exhibition with Side Effects, invites visitors to explore the many dimensions of wellbeing — what health means, who defines it, and how societies might build systems that serve everyone. To develop the exhibition, the team spoke widely: doctors, psychologists, historians, people living with illness, and those who care for them.

One of those conversations was with Joram Ronel, group analyst and head of the Department for Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy at Klinik Barmelweid. It proved generative in ways neither party had anticipated.

“It’s not an everyday experience working with a museum,” Ronel reflected. But the two found common ground quickly. Both a therapeutic setting and a museum, they agreed, are ultimately trying to help people learn about themselves — and about how they function within society.

From Exhibition to Experiment

When Ronel spoke at the opening night of the Health exhibition, his connection between group therapy and the museum experience resonated clearly with visitors. Several approached Sonja Enz, co-director of the Stapferhaus, to ask when they could join a group therapy session of their own. Rather than dismiss the question, Stapferhaus took it seriously.

The result was From Me to We: A Group Experiment — two evenings, thirty participants, all strangers, each committed to attending both sessions. The format was deliberately sparse. There was no crafted dramaturgy, no detailed plan, no drinks. Just a room, a circle of chairs, and Ronel as group analyst.

For Enz, this was a significant departure. “Normally, we invest a lot and use all the tools of art and storytelling to guide visitors through an experience,” she explained. “But this time, we offered very little structure.”

Trusting the Group

That absence of structure was, in Ronel’s framework, the point entirely. He described the setting as designed to place participants in a state of “not belonging” — and then to observe how the group found its way through. It’s a challenge, he noted, that mirrors the one we all face throughout our lives, from kindergarten onwards: how do you move from feeling like a foreigner to feeling like you belong?

His role as analyst was not to lead, but to be present. To mark the beginning and the end. To amplify what was said — and occasionally what was not said. When the group looked to him for direction, he offered only his attention. “I’m frustrating also,” he acknowledged, “because I don’t take the role as a leader.”

The guiding principle came from group theory itself: trust the group. “The capacity of a group to regulate itself, to develop itself is something we should not underestimate.”

What Unfolded

Laura Kunert, a master’s student in psychology who observed both sessions, described a room charged with nervous energy at the start. People were tense, but curious — eager to begin, uncertain of the rules.

The first words spoken came from a young woman who announced, simply, that her nightmare had come true: no structure, no guidance. It was, Kunert recalled, “quite a big opener,” and it unlocked the conversation that followed.

What emerged over the two evenings was a full range of human interaction: the tentative feeling-out of early exchanges, moments of genuine intimacy, small conflicts, and — particularly in the second session — something more unexpected. Participants opened up about loneliness. About wanting to connect. “I found it very, very touching,” Ronel said, “that this happened in this special setting — a structure without structure.”

What This Means for Museums

For Stapferhaus, the experiment was both a success and a prompt to go further. The collaboration with Klinik Barmelweid demonstrated what becomes possible when institutions from different fields work together — each bringing expertise the other doesn’t have, each willing to operate outside their usual methods.

Ronel’s framing of group work as inherently political also offers something for museums to sit with. When a group forms, it immediately begins asking who belongs and who doesn’t — the same dynamics that play out in societies navigating polarisation and division. A museum that can create conditions for that process to unfold, safely and honestly, is doing something more than programming an event.

For Enz, the learning goes both ways. “We can learn so much from each other,” she said, “and we want to continue experimenting with different event formats that really fit the topics we choose.” The Stapferhaus is already at work on its next exhibition, exploring security and risk — and the appetite for collaboration, it seems, has only grown.

Sonja Enz and Joram Ronel presented this work at the Museums & Wellness Summit 2026. The Stapferhaus is located in Lenzburg, Switzerland.