Events

For some time now, tense conditions have shaped our everyday lives. Whether its curfews, violence or the search for one's own identity, we are constantly in the process of readjusting and getting our bearings. Artists respond to the vulnerability and confusion that lies in control, racial discrimination and exclusion. The uncertainty and instability that we experience every day is represented in their work. The new collection presentation will show contemporary artworks from Scharpff-Striebich's private art collection confronted with twentieth-century works from the Staatsgalerie's own collection. These works highlight the complex and contradictory nature of our society.

Over the course of their nearly twenty-year partnership, Anton Kimbel (1822–1895) and Joseph Cabus (1824–1898) developed one of New York City's leading furniture and decorating firms. Sons of German and French cabinetmaking families, they defined a new take on Modern Gothic design, a style that originated in Britain and was embraced by a growing middle class in the post–Civil War United States. Combining British and continental European design sources, Kimbel and Cabus's furniture forms featured bold, clean lines and rich surface decoration, and the firm used innovative production techniques to offer these striking artistic objects at a variety of prices.

Textures synthesizes research in history, fashion, art, and visual culture to reassess the “hair story” of peoples of African descent. Long a fraught topic for African Americans and others in the diaspora, Black hair is here addressed by artists, barbers, and activists in both its historical perceptions and its ramifications for self and society today. Combs, products, and implements from the collection of hair pioneer Willie Morrow are paired here with masterworks from artists including James Van Der Zee, Sonya Clark, Lorna Simpson, Mary Sibande and Zanele Muholi. Exploring topics such as the preferential treatment of straight hair, the social hierarchies of skin, and the power and politics of display, Textures is a landmark exploration of Black hair and its important, complicated place in the history of African American life and culture. The exhibition is organized by the KSU Museum with co-curators, Joseph L. Underwood, assistant professor of art history at KSU and Tameka Ellington, associate professor at the Fashion School at KSU.

In his timeless works Gianni Caravaggio examines the invocation of unconscious images of nature which result from the relationship between material, space, time and man. A key expression here is landscape which no longer represents, but is to be conveyed as “pure perception” in the sense of Kazimir Malevich. The combination of traditional materials – bronze, marble or wood – with everyday substances such as talcum powder or sugar, as well as the presentation of the sculptures directly on the floor, exerts a unique attraction by virtue of their reduction.

“Dreams of Freedom. Romanticism in Russia and Germany” is the first exhibition to present masterpieces from Russia and Germany together, in direct relationship to one another and from a pan-European perspective. It opens up a dialogue between Romanticist art from the two countries of a kind that has never before been attempted.

No other German woman artist of Classic Modernism has achieved such legendary status in the public perception as Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907). Traveling exhibitions were organized through several German museums just a few years after her death, and the artist's reputation continues to this day. In her unique works, Modersohn-Becker created timeless images of universal validity. The SCHIRN's comprehensive retrospective is devoted to the artist's oeuvre as a whole and shows how she anticipated central developments of modernism. In addition to succinct series and pictorial motifs, the presentation also focuses in particular on Modersohn-Becker's remarkable painting style as well as the early and lasting reception of her work. With some 120 paintings and drawings from all her creative phases, the Schirn presents an contemporary view of the oeuvre of this early representative of the avant-garde, whose time-transcending quality continues to fascinate viewers to this day.

ReVisión: Art in the Americas will be 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 thematic presentation will explore land, people, and place by linking ancient and contemporary artworks that address political and social issues at the heart of the region’s cultural heritage as well as expand the narrative through voices that include women artists and contemporary voices that speak to the diversity of the Americas.

Quite apart from her position as the wife and model of Lovis Corinth (1858–1925), Charlotte Berend-Corinth (1880–1967) shone as an artist and was, like Käthe Kollwitz, one of the few women members of the Berlin Secession. This bibliophile monograph is dedicated to the highly gifted, successful and unfairly neglected artist and presents an impressive synopsis of her oeuvre.

Landscapes of Extraction: The Art of Mining in the American West explores the evolution of the art of mining, with works from the 1910s through today that depict regional landscapes of enterprise and examine how mining has altered the natural environment on a spectacular scale.

Pakistani American artist Shahzia Sikander (RISD MFA 1995, Painting and Printmaking) is internationally celebrated for bringing Indo-Persian miniature-painting traditions into dialogue with contemporary art practice. This exhibition tracks the first 15 years of this artistic journey, from her groundbreaking deconstruction of miniature painting in Pakistan to the development of a new personal vocabulary at RISD, expanded explorations around identity as a Core fellow at the Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and her global outlook during her first years in New York. During this period, Sikander richly interrogated gender, sexuality, race, class, and history, creating open-ended narratives that have sustained her work as one of the most significant artists working today.

John Heartfield (1891–1968) was one of the most innovative artists of the twentieth century. His political photomontages became icons in the fight against Nazism. Even today, they have lost none of their explosive power and continue to serve as a source of inspiration for satirical collages and memes. Heartfield assembled press and propaganda images and staged photographs and combined them with ironic quotations and his own commentaries to produce polarizing motifs that denounced the war, social inequality, and Nazism. In his own unique way he used manipulated images to reveal the truth behind the lies. The exhibition shows the many facets of John Heartfield’s art: ranging from book cover designs to stage sets and also including political press work. The selected sheets illustrate how diverse Heartfield’s frame of reference was, from Dada to Bert Brecht, not to mention his own biography disrupted by exile. The juxtaposition of his work with the historic documentation shown in our permanent exhibition highlights its complexity and power in a very special way. The video installation devoted to Heartfield’s artistic personality “Wer Leidet der Schneidet/Wer Schneidet der Leidet” (2019) by Marcel Odenbach rounds off the presentation. The exhibition is the result of a cooperation with the Berlin Academy of Arts, where Heartfield’s estate is housed. The Academy has conducted extensive research on his work and thanks to funding from the Ernst von Siemens Kunststif-tung has been able digitalize it and present it online. Online opening | 1 December 2021, 7 p.m. On the opening the curators Anke Hoffsten (Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism) and Rosa von der Schulenburg (Akademie der Künste, Berlin) will talk about the highlights of the exhibition. City Councilor David Süß will give a welcome remark on behalf of the Lord Mayor of the City of Munich. Due to the current situation the opening takes place only online via livestream on youtube.com/nsdoku.

The exhibits, many of which have never been shown before, illustrate the outstanding importance of Iran as a driving force for intercultural exchange and provide insights into the art of the courts and urban elites. The exhibition shows around 320 objects from the Sarikhani Collection as well as numerous collections of the National Museums in Berlin, highlighting Iran's outstanding importance as a source of inspiration and centre of intercultural exchange between the Mediterranean, China and India from the first advanced civilizations of the 3rd millennium BC to the end of the Safavid Empire in the early 18th century. In a chronologically structured course with seven stations, they illustrate incisions, adaptations and transformations. Highlights are the pre-Islamic empires of the Achaemenids and Sasanids, the formation of a Persian-Islamic culture and the artistic masterpieces of the 9th to 13th centuries as well as the heyday of the Safavids. "Iran. Art and Culture from Five Millennia" is a exhibition of the Museum of Islamic Art in cooperation with the Sarikhani Collection in London.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) and Emil Nolde (1867–1956) are leading figures in the German Expressionist movement. Turning away from Western society and the established norms of bourgeois culture, the artists looked to people, lifestyles and objects from other parts of the world for inspiration, especially Africa and Oceania.

Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945), the most important female artist of classical Modernism in Germany, is unmatched in her works for the emphatic representation of war, poverty and death, but also of love, security and the struggle for peace. Her drawings, prints and sculptures brought her worldwide renown even during her lifetime. From Spring 2022, a new monograph will give an overview of her entire artistic work. The catalogue will feature over 200 illustrations, arranged by topic, and provide a representative selection from the collection of the Käthe Kollwitz Museum in Cologne. The Cologne Kollwitz Collection has the largest stock of drawings, prints and sculptures worldwide and is a dedicated ambassador for the artist’s work. This new standard reference with text contributions by the museum’s art historians will be published in a German and English edition. The presentation of the catalogue will be accompanied by a special exhibition at the Käthe Kollwitz Museum Köln which will – in line with the catalogue – present the topic areas of her work. It is not just her artistic skill that still fascinates people from around the world, but also the timeless emotional clout of her work. This is why the exhibition will be complemented by a special facet – the museum staff presenting their personal collection highlights. These subjective contemplations are a personal impulse and convey a profound connection with the artist.

Friedl Dicker-Brandeis was one of the most important students of the Weimar Bauhaus. Initially she specialised in textile and graphic design, then later worked as an interior designer. Her paintings reflect her profound study of the classical avant-garde. The publication traces in detail the wide-ranging creative achievements of an artist who also suffered political persecution.