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

In the fifth instalment of our ‘Stories from our Travels’, co-curator Ulrike Schmiegelt tells us about a trip that she and our curator Monika Flacke took to Moscow in search of additional objects for the exhibition. A further protagonist in the story: a sparrow on Stalin’s head countering Soviet nostalgia. 

Part of our exhibition was supposed be displayed at the Art Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo from May to July 2014. An international seminar, The Realities of Politics, was planned for the same period. Both events had to be cancelled because the Art Gallery was forced to close. Prior to the closure, its employees had been struggling for almost a year to keep the museum functioning without pay or other financial means. The National Museum and six other institutions were also forced to close in early October 2012. The museum employees nailed thick wooden boards across the entry door, marked with the words, ‘Closed’—after 124 years. Our co-curator Henry Meyric Hughes explains the reasons, which are as tragic as they are political, in his recounting of the trip to Sarajevo. 

A brief anecdote from Ms Flacke, about how she found the Fangor in Łódź, and why for some pictures, you just have to go back once again. 

The story of Monika Flacke’s night on the Serbo-Croatian border has meanwhile become a legend for the team, said our intern Cora Smidt-Ott. We see it that way, too. It happened on the way from Zagreb to Belgrade, when our curator Monika Flacke was refused permission to cross from Croatia to Serbia. It was in February, 2009, in the middle of the night, and she didn’t have a passport. But she will tell you herself how it came about and how it played out. 

For two years, our curators travelled across all of Europe in search of artworks for our exhibition. And anyone who travels has a story (or two) to tell. Every Friday, we would like to recount one of these stories. In our first story, co-curator Ulrike Schmiegelt tells how her intuition about the whereabouts of a mislaid ring led to a successful loan.