Deutsches Historisches Museum - Verf�hrung Freiheit. Kunst in Europa seit 1945 - Blog

To provide you with an overview of the press response to the exhibition, we summarised several reviews and provided links to several others. A question brought up by two of the critics was whether a historical museum is necessary in order to present an art exhibition?

This question caused me to hesitate slightly. My perspective is neither that of an art historian nor of a historian (but rather one of a theatre scholar, if it is of interest). 

A Wednesday morning at the German Historical Museum: The exhibition is open to the public since last night and we are only interested in one thing—the response in the press. The computers in the project offices are quicker than usual, the Google Alerts are already in the mail boxes, and the outside world’s digital evaluation is quickly consumed. There is no audio record of events, but our responses reflected a wide range of emotions. 

The Desire for Freedom. Art in Europe since 1945 reopened to the public in Milan's Palazzo Reale three weeks ago. The opening speeches have been held. The newspapers have published their first reviews. Now it’s time to take a step back. Sticking to the subject of exhibition terminology, we would like to ask: How did the exhibition idea—‘the world in our heads’—become a model and then an exhibition? Why should a painting not hang next to a photograph? And how tall is our ‘optimal visitor’?

The exhibition designer Werner Schulte answered these questions for us. 

At the end of the video Vladimir Mitrev looks up, directly into the camera, sweating—beneath one sees the German national flag, whose colours he has just applied in four hours, or some ten kilometres, of walking. His video installation is titled Schwarz Rot Gelb (2009–2011) [Black Red Yellow]

The path to Germany is not an easy one. 

“A man found an aquarium on a road between towns—an aquarium with live fish in it. Someone had caught the fish in the lake and put them there on the road, hoping someone driving along the road would stop and buy the fresh fish. That is called a parallel economy—in contrast to the organised economy planned by the government and the state. This parallel economy developed as a way of survival.”