Events

Well-known for his etchings on bark paper featuring dazzling skeleton-characters working, celebrating, walking the streets, or crossing borders, Nicolás De Jesús’s political commitment is also expressed through powerful large-scale paintings that tackle a wide range of urgent themes including immigration, human rights, and environmental instability.

The most comprehensive exhibition of work dedicated to visionary artist Joan Jonas (b.1936, New York) in Germany to date has been conceived by the artist and Haus der Kunst in collaboration with Tate Modern, London. Characterised by her fundamental interest in cultural rites and the dynamic processes of mirroring, shifting and redefining genre and time, the major retrospective is underpinned by themes that have recurred throughout her career. Environmental issues, echoed in early video works such as “Wind” (1968) are central to multimedia installations “Reanimation” (2010–12) and “Stream or River, Flight or Pattern” (2016), which address climate change and the threat to the ecosystem. The exploration of collective narratives of mythology, fairy tales and fables, set against a backdrop of contemporary, socio-political events form the starting point for works such as “Juniper Tree” (1969), “Volcano Saga” (1985), and “Lines in the Sand” (2002). The masks and props that have accompanied Jonas in her performances over the years are brought together in reference to the theatrical elements of Japanese Noh theatre and Surrealism. Two live performances express her collaborative approach to movement and sound, including “Mirror Piece I/II” (1968/2018), where Jonas introduced the mirror as a central motif to her work to investigate societal images of femininity, and “Working Together: A Lecture Demonstration” (2015), a homage to her twenty-year collaboration with musician Jason Moran.

Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) is world-famous for his golden and decorative works, his landscapes with colours that flow together like carpets, and striking drawings of voluptuous women. Where did he find inspiration for his multi-faceted art? This unique exhibition explores the influence of the international avant-garde on the work of Gustav Klimt. At this first-ever large-scale exhibition of Klimt’s work in the Netherlands, dozens of his works are on display, from soft, pastel-like paintings to colourful, monumental women’s portraits.

The theme of the exhibition is the turbulent history of LGBTQ* in the first half of the twentieth century. Selected exhibits show how queer life became increasingly visible in all areas of the public sphere from 1900 onwards — in art and culture, science, politics, and the military. However, as the movement gained confidence in its campaign for equal rights, so too did the strength of the resistance to it, culminating in the almost total destruction of queer subcultures and the spaces they occupied by the Nazi regime. “TO BE SEEN” invites visitors to revisit these often forgotten stories and biographies. Alongside historical testimony, the exhibition will also show works by contemporary artists, some of them commissioned especially for the exhibition. They question the standard historical narratives and place them in new international perspectives. Artists: Katharina Aigner, Maximiliane Baumgartner, Cassils, Zackary Drucker, Philipp Gufler, Lena Rosa Händle, Zoltán Lesi, Ricardo Portilho, Henrik Olesen, Karol Radziszewski and others.

Jin-me Yoon is an important Canadian lens-based artist who has been working steadily since emerging on Vancouver’s contemporary art scene in the 1990s. "About Time" focuses on Yoon’s monumental and multifaceted production of the last decade, which typically combines photography, video, performance and installation.

This exhibition will present 67 masterpieces collected by John D. Rockefeller III (1906–1978) and his wife Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller (1909–1992), illuminating the cultures and history of Asia. This important collection underscores art’s capacity to encourage cross-cultural dialogue and influence economic and public policy. The selection of sculptures, bronzes, and ceramics ranges from the late 6th century BCE to the early 19th century CE, and originates from Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tibet, and Vietnam.

One of the most celebrated contemporary German artists, Georg Baselitz (b. 1938) gained international recognition in the 1960s for revitalizing figurative painting. This exhibition celebrates the gift from Baselitz to the Morgan of fifty drawings covering the span of his entire career. On display will be examples from the iconic Heroes series and fractured drawings of the mid-1960s; landscape and figure drawings from the 1970s, when Baselitz began turning his images upside-down to emphasize their structure and materiality over their subject; colorful pastels and watercolors from the 1980s and 90s; and a group of Remix drawings from the last twenty years, in which Baselitz revisits themes from his early works. Organized in collaboration with the Albertina Museum in Vienna, which is the recipient of a similar gift from the artist, the exhibition will include about sixty-five drawings. Combining sheets from both donations, it will present a retrospective of Baselitz’s artistic development and highlight the central role drawing plays in his practice.

Johann Gottfried Schadow (1764–1850), known as the “father of the Berlin school of sculpture”, played a key role in the development of sculpture in Germany. He also made significant contributions to European classicism, a tendency that is inextricably linked with German sculpture. If you look at any overview of this period, you are sure to find the captivating and stunning Luise and Friederike, princesses of Prussia; and you’d be hard pressed to find a single report on the city of Berlin fails to include Schadow’s 1793 creation, the quadriga from the Brandenburg Gate. Since the last retrospective, much has been revealed about the work of Johann Gottfried Schadow. Not only that, but thanks in particular to the large-scale restoration project of the plaster original of the Princess Group, new discoveries have also been made about the sculptor’s workshop and his working methods. Making it high time for a new retrospective.

Born in Beirut, Etel Adnan (1925-2021) is an important representative of modernism. Her artistic and literary work is characterized by a broad and vibrant exchange between the Arab and Western worlds. The work of the poet, journalist, painter and philosopher, who spent her life between Lebanon, France and California, combines very different art forms, media, languages and cultures. After Algeria's War of Independence (1954-1962), Adnan refused to continue working in French and showed solidarity with Algeria: "I didn't need to write in French anymore, I wanted to paint in Arabic." Her political clarity, as well as the close connection between writing and painting, have become essential features of her oeuvre.

“Kinship” presents more than forty artworks by eight contemporary artists whose work explores the notion of “kinship” and the closeness that bonds us. The exhibition spotlights artists Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Ruth Leonela Buentello, Jess T. Dugan, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Jessica Todd Harper, Thomas Holton, Sedrick Huckaby, and Anna Tsouhlarakis. Featuring contemporary portraits in various mediums, “Kinship” explores the ways intergenerational dynamics change in response to physical and symbolic thresholds and borders, including those between life and death; childhood and adulthood; normative gender roles; and geographic regions. The upcoming exhibition will visualize the complex, often paradoxical, and deeply moving ways in which interpersonal relationships endure and change. “Kinship” is the latest in the museum’s “Portraiture Now” series dedicated to contemporary artists and is curated by the Portrait Gallery’s curators Dorothy Moss and Leslie Ureña with Robyn Asleson, Taína Caragol, and Charlotte Ickes. The exhibition will have an accompanying catalogue. Two live performances by artist Anna Tsouhlarakis will take place as part of the exhibition in May and Nov. 2023 in the museum’s Kogod Courtyard. Admission is free.

This exhibition breaks new ground by devoting extensive attention to the Hungarian contribution to modern art in the German capital. Berlin plays a special role in the history of Hungarian art and culture. Even before the First World War, Hungarian artists used the growing metropolis as an exhibition stage to reach an international audience. When reactionary forces put an end to Hungary’s political transformation in 1919, progressive artists in exile found refuge in the cosmopolitan Berlin of the Weimar Republic. They found the space for creative freedom on the banks of the Spree, where they established a significant visibility in various avantgarde contexts. Berlin was a formative influence for many Hungarian artists who, in turn, were a defining force in the art market. Restoring memories of this reciprocal cultural inspiration is the principal aim of this exhibition. It brings together paintings, prints, photographs and architectural drawings, deeply enriching our perception of artistic achievements from East Central Europe.

Marc Chagall is regarded as the poet among the artists of modernism. In a major exhibition, the SCHIRN sheds light on a so far little-known side of his oeuvre: Chagall’s works of the 1930s and 1940s, in which the artist’s colorful palette becomes darker. The life and work of the Jewish painter were profoundly affected by the art policies of the National Socialists and the Holocaust. By the early 1930s, Chagall’s works were already examining the increasingly aggressive anti-Semitism in Europe, and he finally emigrated to the United States in 1941. During these years, his art works touch on central themes such as identity, homeland, and exile.

The significance of the street is complex: it is a place of representation, self-dramatisation and communication, of resistance and protest. In this lavishly illustrated volume we encounter the bandwidth of this highly topical subject and its implementation in painting, graphics, photography, film, performance and installation during the 20th and 21st centuries.

Wiebke Siem (1954 Kiel, DE – Berlin, DE) became known in the 1990s for extensive installations in which she alienated everyday objects, such as pieces of clothing, shoes, bags, or toys, or transformed them into oversized objects. She uses pieces of furniture, objects, and materials with domestic connotations and whimsical, often puppet-like figures to create psychologically charged installations that are as oppressive as they are humorous and that raise questions about societal role models. Siem’s art repeatedly employs a formal language and a mode of presentation that refer to ethnological objects and collections. This enables her to comment on Modernism’s problematic appropriation strategies toward non-European art. In addition to borrowing motifs from art and cultural history, Siem critically engages the mechanisms of the male-dominated art business – a central theme in her oeuvre.

Around 1700, artists in Udaipur (a court in northwest India) began creating immersive paintings that conveyed the mood (bhava) of the city’s palaces, lakes, and mountains. These large paintings and their emphasis on lived experience have never been the focus of an exhibition. With dazzling paintings on paper and cloth—many on public view for the first time—A Splendid Land reveals how artists conveyed emotions, depicted places, celebrated water resources, and fostered personal bonds over some two hundred years in the rapidly changing political and cultural landscapes of early modern South Asia. The exhibition is organized as a journey that begins at Udaipur’s center and continues outward: first to the city, then to the countryside, and finally to the cosmos. A soundscape by the renowned filmmaker Amit Dutta invites contemporary audiences to sense–and not just see—the moods of these extraordinary places and paintings. A Splendid Land: Paintings from Royal Udaipur will also be on view at the Cleveland Museum of Art in Summer 2023.

Humans have long regarded rock crystal as an exceptional material. Numerous legends surround its origins and particular powers, and it is often seen as a manifestation of the divine. It is above all the transparency of rock crystal, which is cooler and harder than glass but softer than a diamond, that lends it its special appeal. Featuring some 120 works, this large-scale exhibition with many international loans will display precious and in many cases unique rock crystal objects that served as reliquaries and sumptuous royal vessels, panel paintings, sculptures and manuscripts, as well as the remnants of a medieval rock crystal workshop preserved in hundreds of individual pieces.

The MdbK will present Olga Costa's diverse oeuvre in a comprehensive exhibition for the first time in Europe. In addition to works from over 50 years of the artist's career, outstanding positions of Mexican modernism, such as Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, María Izquierdo, Rosa Rolanda or Lola Cueto, will also be on display.In Mexico, the Leipzig-born artist Olga Costa (1913-1993) has long since established herself as one of the most important female voices of modernism. In the 1920s, her family emigrated to Mexico, where Costa became self-taught in her new environment. Throughout her life, she was fascinated by the colours of the Latin American landscape, the scenes of everyday life, the indigenous culture and, last but not least, the people themselves. In her paintings, drawings and graphics, Olga Costa combines an independent, modern vocabulary with subtle undertones of content. From a specifically female perspective, her works humorously and thoughtfully always reflect on themes such as freedom, belonging, cultural identity and gender roles.