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

With this last blog entry for 2012 (and no, we don’t believe that the world is going to end on 21 December.), we would like first and foremost to thank you all: our visitors, readers, Facebook fans, Twitter followers, journalists, and bloggers for your visits, comments, conversations, stimulating ideas, suggestions for improvement, and your (often justified) criticism. 

Kristian and I meet for our interview in a room in the administration building that stands out for its vaulted ceiling. Its wood panelling and single large table are supplemented by a wonderful view of the Berlin Cathedral. Its quiet is much better suited to interviews than our noisy project office. After our exciting talk, I actually feel that I have an understanding of what until then had been the least accessible image in the exhibition: Emil Schumacher’s Eruption.  

Henry Meyric Huges lives in London. The first contact with him is always with E-mail and it is soon clear that he answers his E-mail more quickly than anyone else on the Desire for Freedom team. And he writes wonderful E-mails at that. The team members who have not had a chance to meet him personally are enthralled about his British courtesy and understatement. We met him for the first time shortly before the exhibition opening. It reinforced our digital impression and that despite his quite impressive biography (understatement): Director of the Hayward Gallery in London, founding member and President of Manifesta, President of the International Art Critics Association AICA, and recipient of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. And he speaks fluent German. 

Edith Michelsen and Regina Gelbert’s office space is located in structure between both the administrative and exhibition buildings. This architectural ‘in-between’ corresponds well with the work they do. They are the interface between the exhibition objects and the people creating and installing the exhibition. They accompany and document every movement that an object makes during the entire exhibition process, whether while the artwork is underway from Paris to Berlin, stored in the museum’s temporary depot, being unpacked and installed in the exhibition space, or being removed for return to the lender. 

There are many hundreds of thousands of objects in the German Historical Museum (DHM) collections. They are the source of many of the objects in the museum’s permanent exhibition and many special exhibitions. The Desire for Freedom, however, is an exhibition with objects from across Europe and beyond. Organising and coordinating these loans and ensuring their safe arrival at the museum (and departure afterwards) is the job of our project manager, Rania Sid Otmane. With Berlin being only the first destination for the artworks from elsewhere, her work will continue without interruption. In February it is again ‘time to travel’, this time to Milan.