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.

We Capitalists
From Zero to Turbo

13 March to 12 July 2020

Capitalism is far more than simply an economic system. It is a social order that has shaped our thinking, perception and existence for centuries. Approaching the topic from a cultural and historical perspective, the exhibition examines the fundamental characteristics of Capitalism – rationalisation, individualisation, accumulation, money and investment as well as typically Capitalist dynamics such as unrestricted growth and creative crises. In a way, this ‘DNA of Capitalism’ has long become part of our own DNA. How does Capitalism shape our identity and history, for example in terms of our individuality, sense of time, and attitude to material possessions? Can or must we change it – and do we want to?
With a selection of objects taken from the realms of art, history and everyday popular culture, the exhibition sheds light on a complex subject of great social relevance that touches each and every one of us.

Educational programme in cooperation with the Federal Agency for Civic Education.

Fragments from now
for an unfinished Future

An exhibition of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation
20 March to 3 May 2020

The world is in flux: Old classification systems are being turned upside down and appear less reliable. Achievements once considered definitive, for example the creation of an open, peaceful world, are threatened by populist movements and the global threat of climate change and human rights violations. In light of this, it is becoming ever more important to take a stand. Fourteen young scholarship-holders of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation do just that. With their photographs, video works and installations, they address social questions such as diversity and migration and champion an engagement with the world that conceives of all the arts as an integral part of an overarching social discourse.

With Saskia Ackermann, Darío Aguirre, Yevgenia Belorusets, Cihan Cakmak, Soso Dumbadze, Öncü Hrant Gültekin, Raisan Hameed, Carsten Kalaschnikow, Ksenia Kuleshova, Dariia Kuzmych, Sebastian Mühl, Neda Saeedi, Amir Tabatabaei und Vilmos Veress, curated by Beate Eckstein and Annelie Pohlen.

Julius von Bismarck
Fire with Fire

27 March to 30 August 2020

‘I draw inspiration from science and work creatively,’ says Julius von Bismarck about his strategy. Always on the lookout for different forms of perception, he investigates man, nature and technology with the means of art. In his work Egocentric System, he subjected himself to centrifugal forces by spending extended periods of time in a shallow, fast-spinning concrete bowl to explore and manipulate his own perceptions and those of the viewer. In Punishment, he flogged the sea in Rio de Janeiro, the Statue of Liberty in New York and the mountains in the Alps. He chased hurricanes in the US and tamed lightning bolts in Venezuela to explore the aesthetic aspects of the forces of nature.
Von Bismarck processes these artistic expeditions into fascinating works. However mighty and devastating the elemental forces may be, in his work we become aware of the infinite beauty inherent in catastrophic events. The exhibition visualises von Bismarck’s creative engagement with forest fires in a multimedia installation, sound and sculptures. The exhibition taps into our subconscious and presents a striking ‘psychoanalysis of fire.’

State of the Arts
Video ∙ Installation ∙ Performance

17 April to 28 June 2020

The exhibition State of the Arts presents one of the most intriguing artistic phenomena of our time: the fusion of the dramatic and the fine arts. Today, more often than not, the experience of art is not just purely visual. Instead, it is a more comprehensive experience that involves all the senses. Artists combine dance, performance, poetry and music and invite the audience to engage with art on a multisensory level. This may also involve becoming part of the work and transcending the customary detachment of spectatorship. The fusion of the arts and the blurring of the distinction between disciplines are markers of contemporary art that emerged in the 1960s. By now, the conceptualisation of artistic media as broad and interconnected has become widely accepted. The exhibition brings together works that oscillate between the disciplines – performative sculptures, sound objects and multimedia installations as well as performances in the exhibition space.

Double Lives
Visual Artists Making Music

19 June to 4 October 2020

Taking its starting point in the sizable number of important artists who are as dedicated to musicmaking as they are to their visual practice, the exhibition focuses on the presentation of music. Large-screen projections of videos of concert and studio performances conjure a sense of being present at the live event and showcase different approaches to staging performance situations.
The exhibition spans the period from the early twentieth century to the present. Beginning with Duchamp and the Futurists, Yves Klein and the Fluxus artists Nam June Paik and Yoko Ono, it moves on to the key figures of the 1960s and 70s such as A. R. Penck, Gerhard Rühm or Hermann Nitsch. The protagonists of Proto-Punk like Captain Beefheart and Alan Vega usher in the numerous artists’ bands of the 1980s that numbered artists like Albert Oehlen or Pipilotti Rist among their members.
The stylistically more heterogenous scene since the 1990s is represented by Carsten Nicolai, Emily Sundblad et al.

An exhibition organised by mumok Vienna in cooperation with the Bundeskunsthalle.

Max Klinger
and Europe

4 September 2020 to 10 January 2021

Max Klinger (1857–1920) is one of the most controversial artists of the Symbolist movement. In his paintings and sculptures, he turned away from the stale academicism and idealisation that governed figuration at the time and embraced a naturalism that shocked his contemporaries. His novel approach played an important role in the modern conceptualisation of the human figure.
Inspired by Wagner’s idea of the gesamtkunstwerk, Klinger sought to overcome the division of the creative disciplines and to fuse painting, sculpture, architecture and even music into a single harmonious whole. His monumental Beethoven statue of 1902, widely regarded as the epitome of late romantic veneration of the composer, will go on display in Bonn at the end of the Beethoven anniversary year of 2020.
The retrospective marking the 100th anniversary of Klinger’s death in 2020 sets out to open the way for the long overdue reassessment of the artist’s work.

In cooperation with the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig