Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Imaginary Travels

16 November 2018 to 3 March 2019

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, co-founder of the Brücke artists’ group, is probably the best-known German Expressionist painter and a driving force of the European avant-garde. One of the leitmotifs of his life and work was the quest for the ‘exotic’ and the primal, for far-off lands and cultures. Although he never ventured beyond the borders of Germany and Switzerland, his work bears witness to his passionate engagement with non-European cultures.
Tracing the artist’s progress through Dresden, Berlin, Fehmarn and Davos, Imaginary Travels sheds light on Kirchner’s life and career from 1909 to his death in the Swiss mountains in 1938. Alongside numerous important and rarely exhibited paintings by Kirchner, the retrospective also presents the artist’s sculptures, woodcuts, drawings, photographs and textiles.

The exhibition Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Imaginary Travels is curated by Katharina Beisiegel (Art Centre Basel) in cooperation with the Kirchner Museum Davos and Thorsten Sadowsky. It is organised by the Art Centre Basel in cooperation with the Bundeskunsthalle.

Modernist Cinema
Film in the Weimar Republic

14 December 2018 to 24 March 2019

In the Weimar Republic, in the years between 1918 and 1933, film emerged as a new form of art. Dubbed the ‘seventh art’, it was experienced collectively and in public in the cinema.
1920s cinema provided scope for experimentation and shaped today’s international film aesthetic like no other period. German film production and, with it, directors like Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau and Fritz Lang and actors like Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings achieved worldwide recognition, and for a while the German film industry was seen as a serious competitor to Hollywood.
The exhibition sheds light on what was fresh and original about the new medium and on its relationship and interplay with literature, the fine arts, architecture, psychology and socio-political developments. The mise-en-scène of the exhibition and a series of media installations foreground the ground-breaking innovations.

A joint exhibition of Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn, and Deutsche Kinemathek, Berlin

Michael Jackson: On the Wall

22 March to 14 July 2019

Michael Jackson is one of the most influential cultural figures to come out of the 20th century and his legacy continues into the 21st century. His significance is widely acknowledged when it comes to music, music videos, dance, choreography and fashion, but his considerable influence on contemporary art is an untold story. Since Andy Warhol first used his image in 1982, Jackson has become the most depicted cultural figure in visual art by an extraordinary array of leading contemporary artists.
This landmark exhibition explores the influence of Michael Jackson on some of the leading names in contemporary art, spanning several generations of artists across all media. For the first time, Michael Jackson: On the Wall will bring together the works of over forty of these artists, drawn from public and private collections around the world, including new works made especially for the exhibition.

The exhibition was developed by the National Portrait Gallery, London, and organised with the Bundeskunsthalle. Michael Jackson. On the Wall is produced with the cooperation of the Michael Jackson Estate.

Power Play
Anna Uddenberg

5 April to 15 September 2019

Anna Uddenberg explores social conventions, norms and rhetorics. She challenges ingrained ways of thinking and seeing as well as our mental and physical mobility. With her sculptures and installations, she reflects our everyday life and investigates how new technologies, especially social media, affect our consumer culture. She analyses social and cultural systems and scrutinises the role and the cliché-driven role models of women. Her hybrid sculptures – pieces of ‘seating furniture’ and unrealistic ‘ideal types’ – testify to the artist’s interest in space (for the critical analysis of social conditions and utopias) and forms of representation.
By exaggerating the figure/figuration, deconstructing and constructing it as a collaged synthesis of objet trouvés and handmade objects, Uddenberg holds up a mirror to modern society. Her visually disturbing and often surprising works invite us to question our values.

Goethe's Gardens
Green worlds on the roof of the Bundeskunsthalle

13 April to 15 September 2019

The garden on the rooftop of the Bundeskunsthalle beckons visitors to feast their eyes and minds. In 1776, when Goethe moved into his first Weimar home not far from the river Ilm, he was particularly interested in the extensive garden and immediately set about its redesign. In addition to a kitchen garden, he created a small landscape garden in the English style with winding paths and shady spots to rest and read. He kept numerous flowerbeds for his botanical experiments that led him to develop his own theory on the metamorphosis of plants. When he moved into the house on the Frauenplan in central Weimar, he once again devoted a great deal of attention to the garden and devoted a pavilion to his collection of minerals, rocks and fossils from all over the world.
The Bundeskunsthalle roof garden will pick up on all these aspects. Because it will change with seasons, visitors are advised to return from time to time.

Goethe
Transformation of the World

17 May to 15 September 2019

Johann Wolfgang Goethe is Germany’s most famous poet and writer. His works have been translated into every major language, and characters like Faust and Werther found their way into every genre of art. Like no other artist of his time, Goethe reflected the dramatic changes that sent shockwaves through the very foundations of Europe around 1800. He was not only an attentive observer of the dawn of modernity, but also an immensely versatile artist who continues to inspire writers, painters and sculptors as well as composers, photographers and film directors.
The first major Goethe exhibition in 25 years sheds light on his life, the dawn of our modern world and on the history of the reception of his singular work. Theatre, film and music will play an important role alongside paintings, sculptures and photography.

An exhibition of the Bundeskunsthalle and the Klassik Stiftung Weimar in cooperation with the Freies Deutsches Hochstift, Frankfurt/Main, the Goethe Museum Düsseldorf and the Museo Casa di Goethe, Rome, under the patronage of Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

California Dreams
San Francisco – a Portrait

13 September 2019 to 12 January 2020

The exhibition paints a multifaceted portrait of San Francisco across four centuries. Throughout its history and up to the present day, San Francisco and California at large have been a focal point of dreams of ‘a better life,’ of prosperity and abundance, of different (at times utopian) social orders, of innovative life styles and artistic perspectives, and of new scientific and technological horizons.
Both the Asian-Pacific region to the west as well as Europe to the east had lasting influences in shaping the city’s cultural dynamics. With artworks and historical objects the exhibition tells the varied history of San Francisco and at the same time touches on important questions of pressing global concern today, especially the issues of migration and displacement. The exhibition will celebrate San Francisco as the site of contested cultural pluralism that it has been right from the start.

Federal Prize for Art Students

18 October 2019 to 5 January 2020
24th Federal Competition of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research

Every two years, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research holds the competition Federal Prize for Art Students. The competition is open to students enrolled at the 24 art academies in Germany. Every academy nominates two of their most promising students.
An independent jury selects five to eight winners. The prizes include an exhibition with catalogue at the Bundeskunsthalle, cash prizes and studio grants.
The competition Federal Prize for Art Students is supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and organised by the German National Association for Student Affairs. It chief aim is to support young artists, to give them an opportunity to exhibit their work and to make the transition from the academy to the professional world.
This year’s design of the poster, catalogue and website lies in the hands of the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg.

Martin Kippenberger
BITTESCHÖN DANKESCHÖN
A Retrospective

1 November 2019 to 16 February 2020

Hugely versatile and complex, Martin Kippenberger was one of the most important German artists and helped shape the face of the 1980s and 90s. His position in the history of contemporary art was recognised and celebrated during his lifetime, and his legacy as a teacher and role model for generations of artists continues to be of national and international importance. Kippenberger’s creative practice was characterised by a feigned carefree dilettantism – a strategy he used with great deliberation. The polymorph complexity of his work, his knowing, unconventional, witty and often self-deprecating way of playing with form and content and his questioning of meaning or established concepts also place him in the Dada tradition. His work is based on a profound knowledge of the history of art and the close observation of everyday life. The exhibition will present paintings, drawings, posters, multiples, sculpture as well as expansive installations.

Beethoven
World.Citizen.Music

17 December 2019 to 26 April 2020

In cooperation with the Beethoven Haus Bonn, the Bundeskunsthalle marks the 250^th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth in 2020 with a major exhibition.
The interdisciplinary exhibition traces the key events and phases of Beethoven’s life and correlates them with his singular musical oeuvre. The central narrative is underpinned by a series of select special focus sections – for example ‘Beethoven as a Patient’, ‘Networks’ or ‘Business Strategies’ – each of which relates to key works. The exhibition presents unique original objects and iconic portraits to shed light on the composer’s personality and scrutinise the many clichés and myths that have grown around him over the course of the last 200 years. Period instruments and audio stations invite visitors to immerse themselves in Beethoven’s captivating musical cosmos. Further to his creative practice, the exhibition explores the cultural and historical context of the composer’s life and work.

An exhibition of the Bundeskunsthalle in cooperation with the Beethoven-Haus Bonn.