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

After our last Tuesday Question explained why there are only 113 artists in our exhibition, but 180 in the catalogue, this Tuesday Question also has to do with the catalogue. Since in addition to our traditional printed catalogue we also have an online version.

But why an online version, and what is it? 

‘Overloaded.’ criticised some reviewers. ‘Too many works.’ wrote others. But not one had found it ‘Too empty.’

This edition of our Tuesday Question has to do with quantity. And we posed it to our curator, Monika Flacke: 

The Jewish graphic artist Leo Glückselig emigrated with his family from Vienna to New York in 1938. Almost sixty years later, he saw a photograph of a work by the French artist Christian Boltanski in a newspaper article about an art exhibition. And was immediately taken aback by what he saw. 

The rooms in the exhibition have names, such as ‘We are the Revolution’, ’99 Cent’, ‘A Hundred Years’, or ‘The Realities of Politics’. A room title that not only mystified some visitors, but also some of our own staff is from the third room, ‘Journey into Wonderland’. The works presented here range from Damien Hirst’s Dead End Jobs to Anselm Kiefer’s Heroische Sinnbilder (Heroic Symbols), Günther Uecker’s Kriegssarg (War Coffin), and Armando’s Schuldige Landschaft (Guilty Landscape). They focus on how to deal with remembrance, especially after the Second World War.

But what does that have do with a ‘land of wonder’? 

With the Tuesday Question we want to introduce a blog category dedicated to the questions most frequently asked by visitors. We hear about these questions from the security staff in the exhibition and the guest book. We also enjoy the contact via Facebook or Twitter (#D4freedom) very much.

Last weekend we had a celebration at the museum and the question that our curator Monika Flacke heard most frequently was:

How are the objects chosen for an exhibition?