Events

After more than 25 years of enthusiastic collecting, the museum's exhibits now comprise about 300 drawings, more than 500 prints, and all her posters and sculptures. Among the drawings - a focal point of the collection - there are some of her most impressive works, many from her later phase when she was predominantly preoccupied with the theme of death. Of her earlier work, three of the less than ten pastel and charcoal drawings that have been preserved and which she produced for the satirical periodical "Simplicissimus" are represented in the museum's collection. Sketch-like preparatory drawings, which throw light on the genesis of important prints, are also part of the collection. A focal point of these works is the history of the creation of her cycle entitled "Peasants' War" (1901-1908) and her series named "War" (1921/1922). In the field of prints all her great cycles are represented. These are milestones not only in the development of Käthe Kollwitz' work, but also in the development of 20th century prints in general. These prints include her earlier cycles "A Weavers' Revolt" (1893-1897) and "Peasants' War" (1901-1908) which were based on literary models, the woodcut series "War" (1921-1922), "Proletariat" (1925) and the later series of lithographs "Death" (1934-1937). In addition, the collection comprises individual works such as her last lithograph "Seed for sowing should not be milled" from the year 1941, which is the artist's legacy in her fight against war and the death of soldiers in action. Recently, the Käthe Kollwitz Museum in Cologne succeeded in acquiring very rare prints from an important private collection which had been largely unknown to the general public. Among them are three early self-portraits: two etchings and a large-scale colour lithograph from 1903/4. The "Self-portrait en face" is printed in four colours. Being an experimental leaf, no further prints were made. For this reason, this print is unique and a highlight in the artist's œuvre as well as an example of the museum's successful acquisition policy. The 15 bronze sculptures are of particular importance as almost all the examples shown in the museum are rare early casts. Together with the copy of "The Mourning Parents" in the ruin of the church of Alt St. Alban and the relief on the Levy tombstone in the Jewish cemetery in Bocklemünd, Cologne provides the unique opportunity of an overview of the artist's complete sculptural work. The Kollwitz posters, all of which are represented in the museum, are a rare highlight of the collection. The artist created them above all in the 1920s following her motto "I would like to exert influence in these times". The posters express an anti-war message and emphasise the artist's commitment to social justice, humanity and peace. Another part of the collection which is meanwhile almost complete is Käthe Kollwitz' book illustrations. All the works by Käthe Kollwitz illustrated in our Internet presentation are part of the collection of the Käthe Kollwitz Museum Köln.

This ambitious exhibition will for the first time examine a key moment in the history of fashion, when artists and architects developed a radical, new vision for dress that liberated the female body. The unity of art and life at the base of the “Reform” movement around 1900 motivated artists and architects to include woman’s dresses into their innovative aesthetic design experiments. They introduced their ideas to the public in a groundbreaking exhibition at the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in 1900, which serves as the point of departure of Tailored for Freedom. The exhibition will present the artistic dress as a part of the Gesamtkunstwerk idea within the socio-political context of the European “Reform” movement and will include fashion, paintings, sculptures, applied arts, photography, dance and advertising notably from German reform movement centres, the Wiener Werkstätte, the British Arts and Crafts movement and Paul Poiret.

Drawing primarily from the National Portrait Gallery’s vast collection of self-portraits, this exhibition will explore how American artists have chosen to portray themselves since the beginning of the last century. As people are confronted each day with “selfies” via social media and as they continue to examine the fluidity of contemporary identity, this is an opportune time to reassess the significance of self-portraiture in relation to the country’s history and culture. The exhibition will feature more than 75 works by artists such as Josef Albers, Patricia Cronin, Imogen Cunningham, Elaine de Kooning, Edward Hopper, Joan Jonas, Jacob Lawrence, Alice Neel, Louise Nevelson, Diego Rivera, Lucas Samaras, Fritz Scholder, Roger Shimomura, Shahzia Sikander and Martin Wong. “Eye to I: Self-Portraits from 1900 to Today” is curated by Brandon Brame Fortune, chief curator, National Portrait Gallery. This exhibition concludes the Portrait Gallery’s 50th anniversary celebrations, and an expanded, illustrated companion book will be published in spring 2019.

The exhibition World Receivers. Georgiana Houghton—Hilma af Klint—Emma Kunz will offer insight into an extraordinary and largely obscure episode in the history of modernism: without knowing of each other, Georgiana Houghton (1814–1884) in England, Hilma af Klint (1862–1944) in Sweden, and Emma Kunz (1892–1963) in Switzerland devised singular abstract visual languages fraught with symbolism. They pursued their convictions with great perseverance and confidence; their shared desire was to translate the laws of nature and spiritual and extrasensory phenomena into images. Their works are rarely on public view, and our exhibition will be the first to show the three artists together. Curated by Karin Althaus and Sebastian Schneider In cooperation with Victorian Spiritualists' Union, Melbourne The Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm Emma Kunz Zentrum, Würenlos

The Museum of Lacquer Art is a facility owned by BASF in Münster. The museum is in the heart of the city and displays a globally unique collection of lacquer art from East Asia, Europe and the Islamic world with objects from the past two millennia. Our regularly occurring special exhibitions place special emphasis on both traditional and contemporary aspects of lacquer art.

At the start of the Dutch Golden Age, Rome was the centre of the world. Young painters from across Europe made their way to the Eternal City, where – so the rumour went – the painter Caravaggio had caused a revolution. A new realism in the art of painting, unparalleled drama, grand gestures and mysteries of light: everyone wanted to see it for themselves. Among them were the Utrecht painters Dirck van Baburen, Hendrick ter Brugghen and Gerard van Honthorst. During the heyday of European Caravaggism, between 1600-1630, some 2700 artists were listed in Rome, of which 572 were foreigners. They all visited the same churches and viewed the same collections. They conversed with each other, and of course they painted! And they painted the same themes, used the same sources of inspiration, but the works they produced were nonetheless very different. Utrecht, Caravaggio and Europe examines precisely these differences between the European followers of Caravaggio. By presenting the works on the basis of themes, it is immediately evident how each artist remained rooted in his own cultural background. Utrecht, Caravaggio and Europe brings the Rome of 1600 to 1630 to Utrecht. Presenting seventy masterpieces, this exhibition is the first to display the Utrecht Caravaggists alongside their European counterparts: the Italian painters Caravaggio, Bartolomeo Manfredi, Cecco da Caravaggio, Giovanni Antonio Galli (Lo Spadarino), Giovanni Serodine, Orazio Borgianni and Orazio Gentileschi, the Spaniard Jusepe de Ribera, the French Nicolas Régnier, Nicolas Tournier, Simon Vouet and Valentin de Boulogne, and the Flemish Gerard Seghers and Theodoor Rombouts. The exhibition comprises over sixty loan pieces, from museum and private collections across Europe and the United States, including the Vatican Museums, the Louvre (Paris), the Galleria degli Uffizi (Florence), the National Gallery of Art of London and the National Gallery of Art of Washington DC, but also from churches in Rome. The paintings by the Utrecht Caravaggists are so recognisably Dutch, because they took Caravaggio’s realism one step further. Baburen and Ter Brugghen also painted the ugly sides of reality: monstrous noses, rotten teeth, dirty fingernails. Ter Brugghen even has the questionable honour of having painted the ugliest but also the most realistic baby in seventeenth century art. Gerard van Honthorst was very successful in Rome. Honthorst’s invention of illuminating his scenes from a hidden, indirect source of light became so famous that he was nicknamed ‘Gherardo delle Notti’: Gerard of the Nights. Just like Dirck van Baburen, he received important commissions for altar pieces, and works by both artists were purchased by important collectors such as Cardinal Giustiniani, who was also a patron of Caravaggio. Their paintings were hung in the halls of his palazzo, next to those of the Italian, Flemish, French and Spanish painters. The exhibitions follows the three Utrecht artists on their Roman adventure, demonstrates how this affected their work, and displays their most accomplished pieces.

The principle of folding has characterized Peter Weber’s work for over 40 years. It has become the distinctive mark of his art. In the mid-1970s he created the first works, initially out of paper and cardboard. Folding enabled him to relate space and surface, two- and three-dimensionality, by means of a simple and yet centuries-old traditional practice. Themes that had previously occupied him in his artistic work could now be precisely realized with this technique. Certain peculiarities have typified his procedures until today. Weber folds all of his works out of one piece of material. He makes no cuts in the surface. Each folding is first conceived and planned in his sketch book. Then he realizes it first in packing paper and finally in models. Considerations of light and shadow, which further modify the three-dimensionality of the works, play a crucial role in the design stage. Geometric order – and the occasional chaotic dissolution of this order by chance – is his leitmotif. Even when Weber works with felt, a heavy textile that is in reality hardly pliable, he folds it on the reverse side and sees the final result only after the final fold."

This exhibition presents more than 200 photographs from the extraordinary and eclectic collection of the long-time Toronto couple. The Tanenbaums were among the first Canadian collectors to engage with the medium during its late 20th century rise to prominence; over time, they assembled one of the country’s great holdings of photography. True to the Eyes highlights a range of humanistic photographs in many genres, from anonymous vernacular imagery to masterworks by such notable photographers as Southworth & Hawes, William Notman, Ernest J. Bellocq, Brassaï, Lisette Model, Diane Arbus, Mary Ellen Mark, Jim Goldberg, and Edward Burtynsky. Through four decades of building their collection, the Tanenbaums have acquired images revealing aspects of family, wealth and poverty, civil rights, nature and the land, and Canadian life. The exhibition is accompanied by a richly-illustrated book published in partnership with Hirmer Verlag.

This exhibition is the first devoted to the family portraiture of Frans Hals (1582/83–1666), one of the foremost painters of the Dutch Golden Age. Organized by the Toledo Museum of Art and the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels, the exhibition was prompted by the Toledo Museum of Art’s acquisition in 2011 of Frans Hals’s Van Campen Family Portrait in a Landscape, as well as the recent conservation of Brussels’ Three Children of the Van Campen Family. These two works originally formed one composition, separated for unknown reasons likely in the late 18th century or early 19th century. The exhibition reunites the sections of the Toledo/Brussels painting, where it will be shown with the three other family portraits painted by the artist, and includes loans from the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, the National Gallery in London, the Cincinnati Art Museum and other distinguished collections.

Our first show of 2019 will showcase the highly original landscapes of the Norwegian symbolist artist, Harald Sohlberg (1869 – 1935), arguably one of the greatest masters of landscape painting in the history of Norwegian art. Timed to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Sohlberg’s birth it will be the first major show of his work outside of Norway. Like Edvard Munch, Sohlberg strongly denied the influence of other contemporary artists, disassociating himself from discussions about where he belonged in the history of art. Instead, he relegated the origins of his artistic awakening to his own psyche and to the intense stories and mythologies of the Norwegian land. Consequently, Sohlberg’s paintings depict the wilderness of the Nordic landscape, the soft beauty of the flower fields and the harsh cold of the winter. This major retrospective will show the breadth and ambiguity of Sohlberg’s art whilst revealing its relevance beyond Norway’s borders. It will trace Sohlberg’s entire artistic career, from his earliest production as a twenty-year-old in 1889 through to the last year of his life and reveal influences such as Norwegian Naturalism and Symbolism, which he was exposed to during his training in Copenhagen and Christiania. The exhibition will also include Sohlberg’s iconic landscape, Winter Night in the Mountains, regarded as the ‘National Painting of Norway’.