Events

ReVisión: Art in the Americas is the first exhibition to open in the Martin Building. A strong selection of nearly 180 objects from the museum’s ancient American and Latin American art collections, hailed as one of the best in the country, will tell a visually compelling narrative about the formation of the Americas from 100 B.C. to today. The narrative will explore land, people, and place by linking ancient and contemporary artworks. These artworks address political and social issues at the heart of the America's cultural heritage and expand that narrative through voices that include women artists and ethnic minorities. ReVisión is organized by DAM curators Victoria I. Lyall, Frederick and Jan Mayer Curator of Art of the Ancient Americas, and Jorge Rivas Pérez, Frederick and Jan Mayer Curator of Latin American Art. The majority of the works on view will be from the DAM’s permanent collection, with additional loans from institutions such as the Blanton Museum of Art, and the Pérez Museum.

Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s–1980s traces the emergence and development of abstraction in the Arab world through paintings and sculpture dating from the 1950s through the 1980s. Drawn from the collection of the Barjeel Art Foundation, it will feature some sixty works by a diverse group of artists from across the Middle East and North Africa.

The voluptuous gaze upon the abysmal, the exacerbated aestheticism of a jaded society, which considered itself as being in crisis, the morbid allurement of the tension between Thanatos and Eros – all these are artistic topics that took shape in the late nineteenth century and found expression especially in Belgian Symbolism. In sharp contrast to naturalists’ and impressionists’ excitement for those facets of modernity that lie on the surface and in the ephemeral, a new artistic movement emerged in the 1880s, whose main characteristics were sensuality, fascination for magic, profound signification, as well as irrationality. Thus, symbolism can be regarded, in many aspects, as an anticipation of Freud’s theory on the interpretation of dreams, which was eventually published in 1899.

The political collages of John Heartfield (1891–1968) have earned him a reputation as one of the most innovative graphic artists of the Weimar Republic. His photomontages and book covers based on collages which had their origins in Berlin’s Dada scene were directed against Fascism and made him internationally famous. Their explosive power has lost none of its impact.

For the first time, Rafael Jablonka is appearing at the Albertina Museum to provide insights into his contemporary art collection, one of the most distinctive collections of American and German art from the 1980s, which he turned over to the ALBERTINA Museum in July 2019. Jablonka spent decades collecting with a consistent eye to acquiring more and more works from the various creative phases of the artists on whom he had chosen to focus. In this showing, Jablonka—a German art dealer, gallerist, and curator who was born in 1952—devotes himself above all to artists of his own generation. The selected works provide a representative look into these artists’ respective oeuvres in keeping with a one-artist-per-room concept. The museum is using two levels to show around 120 works including paintings, sculptures, works on paper, woodcuts, and architectural models, thus enabling visitors to experience all of the Jablonka Collection’s broad diversity. Featured artists: Miquel Barceló | Ross Bleckner | Richard Deacon | Eric Fischl | Damien Hirst | Roni Horn | Mike Kelley | Sherrie Levine | Cady Noland | Thomas Schütte | Andreas Slominski | Philip Taaffe | Terry Winters

Alberto Giacometti forged a singular path within European Modernism, restlessly seeking a new language for sculpture as a “double of reality”. Presenting some 100 sculptures and paintings, the exhibition trails the evolution of Giacometti’s work from post-cubism through surrealism to post-war realism, with a special emphasis on his surrealist period. Throughout his life, Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) was in conversation with some of the most influential intellectuals of the twentieth century. By highlighting three writers – Georges Bataille, Jean Genet, and Samuel Beckett, with whom the artist sustained lasting friendships – the exhibition examines how these dialogues may be traced in Giacometti’s oeuvre. Curated by Jo Widoff, Moderna Museet, and Christian Alandete and Catherine Grenier, Fondation Giacometti

Marking the 500th anniversary of the Spanish conqueror Hernán Cortés' landfall in the Gulf of Mexico, this major exhibition offers a fascinating insight into Aztec culture. At the centre of the exhibition are two unique feather shields and a nephrite jade figurine from the Württemberg State Museum, objects that have never been presented in the context of Aztec culture. These exquisite treasures will be complemented by high-quality objects loaned from Mexican and European institutions. Another focal point of this exhibition will be the presentation of the latest research results; for example, previously undisclosed findings regarding the great temple, the Templo Mayor, first discovered in 1978, will be on display. Impressive stone sculptures, ceramics, mosaics and gold works will provide a glimpse into Aztec art and culture, with vivid illustrations from colourful illuminated manuscripts bringing the visitor deeper into the subject. The dramaturgy of the exhibition follows the journey of Cortés from the peripheral provinces all the way to the sacred ceremonial precinct of the capital, Tenochtitlán.

In 2000 the Saint Louis Art Museum purchased Cavaliere d’Arpino’s "Perseus Rescuing Andromeda", an exceptional painting on lapis lazuli. The acquisition of the small, stunning work of art spurred extensive research that culminates in "Paintings on Stone: Science and the Sacred 1530–1800", the first systematic examination of the pan-European practice of this unusual and little-studied artistic tradition.

Elina Brotherus (*1972 in Helsinki) is internationally known for her self-portraits. And the fact is that she herself may be seen in almost all of her photographic and video works. These include series resembling diaries, photographed landscapes and situational mood-pictures. The exhibition at the Weserburg directs attention to more recent works and groups of works created since 2016. Here the Finnish artist appropriates various contemporary concepts of art and integrates them into her own unmistakeable aesthetic. She thereby follows Arthur Køpcke’s motto: ‘People ask: Why? I ask: Why not?’ A masterly lightness and an absurd humour give rise to surprising pictorial inventions with which Brotherus engages in a fresh exploration of the possibilities offered by photography.

During a period of radical change, Ruth Baumgarte (1923–2013) created an artistic oeuvre in which humankind and its fragile existence form the main area of focus. This volume introduces her as a passionate creator of drawings, a versatile applied graphic artist and an expressive painter.