“Germany is not an Island”
Contemporary Art Collection of the Federal Republic of Germany
Acquisitions 2012 – 2016

8 March to 3 June 2018

The exhibition presents a selection of works acquired over the last five years by a specialist committee for the Contemporary Art Collection of the Federal Republic of Germany. It includes works by renowned young artists. The acquisitions testify to the high standard of the Federal Collection and show how historical and current developments, collective viewing habits and the questioning of image constructs translate into contemporary art. Ranging from large-scale installations to drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, video and sound works, the selection bears witness to the wealth of media and techniques that distinguish contemporary artistic practice.

An exhibition of Bundeskunsthalle in cooperation with the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media

Marina Abramovic
The Cleaner

20 April to 12 August 2018

Radical, controversial and admired in equal measure, Marina Abramović is one of the most talked about international artists today. She is famous for her ground-breaking performances in which she explores personal experience and responsibility and continues to probe her own physical and psychological limits. She addresses fundamental existential questions – the passage of time, physical vulnerability, memory, pain, loss, endurance and trust – that provoke or touch the viewer with great immediacy.
The first major retrospective to be shown in Europe, the exhibition presents works from all periods of Abramović’s career – from the early years to the present. Films, photographs, paintings and objects, installations and select archival material shed light on the depth and conceptual reach of the Marina Abramović’s creative cosmos. A series of reperformances enhances the visitor experience.

An exhibition of Bundeskunsthalle in cooperation with Moderna Museet, Stockholm, and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk

Nazca. Divine Drawings
Archaeological Discoveries
from Southern Peru

10 May to 16 September 2018

In the southern Peruvian desert, one of the biggest archaeological mysteries is waiting to be solved: the giant geoglyphs of the Nazca culture of ca. 200 BC – 650 AD.
There has been endless speculation about the meaning of the Nazca Lines. But it was not until recently that archaeological research has provided clues to the worldview and culture of the Nazca.
The exhibition takes visitors on a fascinating journey into the mysterious southern Peru of the Nazca period. It invites them to marvel at rich funerary gifts from vast burial complexes, images of strange flying beings – half human, half animal – on colourful ceramic vessels and the most stunningly beautiful archaeological textile finds. Many of the exhibits have never been shown outside Peru. The geoglyphs, some of which extend over several kilometres on the arid plateau between the towns of Nazca and Palpa, are presented in modern multimedia installations.

An exhibition of Museo de Arte de Lima – MALI – and Museum Rietberg, Zürich, in cooperation with Bundeskunsthalle

Touchdown
An Exhibition with and about People with Down’s Syndrome

24 January to 13 May 2018
Zentrum Paul Klee

29 October 2016 to 12 March 2017
Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn

The exhibition with and about people with Down’s syndrome is the first exhibition of its kind to take visitors on an experimental and culture historical journey through our past and present. It tells the story of a complex relationship. It describes how people lived, live and want to live – people with and without Down’s syndrome.
Conceived in cooperation with people with Down’s syndrome, the exhibition presents scientific and artistic artefacts from the realms of archaeology, contemporary history, medicine, genetics, film and the fine arts. In its conceptual depth and dynamic diversity of voices, the exhibition does not set out to provide pat ready answers but to engage in a sustainable and better informed debate about social diversity and participation.

A cooperation with the research project TOUCHDOWN 21

The Playground Project
Outdoor

31 May to 28 October 2018

To complement The Playground Project (from 13 July), the Bundeskunsthalle is opening the roof garden and the forecourt to Outdoor, an exhibition on the subject of ‘Play’, which provides contemporary artists Nevin Aladag, Kristina Buch, Olafur Eliasson, Jeppe Hein, Carsten Höller, Christian Jankowski, Llobet & Pons, Michel Majerus, Andreas Schmitten, Thomas Schütte, Superflex, Rirkrit Tiranavija, Alvaro Urbano and Ina Weber with an opportunity to design interactive installations and spaces, forms and utensil for play. Visitors are invited to experience art in a playful, participatory and performative manner. According to a philosophical definition of Homo ludens, play is a primary condition of the generation of culture, because it is through play that Homo ludens, unlike Homo faber, develops his skills. It is in play as a fundamental, formative and necessary human activity that he discovers his individual qualities, and this experience allows him to develop his dormant personality. In this definition, play is equated with freedom and autonomy of mind.

Carsten Höller
Bonner Rutschbahn / Bonn Slide

From 31 May 2018

Carsten Höller has developed a site-specific slide connecting the roof and the forecourt for the entrance façade of the Bundeskunsthalle. Höller’s sculpture and Gustav Peichl’s architecture enter into a respectful symbiotic relationship that allows the visitor to see both in a new light that brings together the hitherto separate qualities of aesthetics and functionalism. The slide will be inaugurated as part of the exhibition The Playground Project – Outdoor, but will remain in place for several years to be enjoyed during the outdoor season.
Carsten Höller conceives of the museum as a space that is not just devoted to the preservation of the old, but also to experimentation, innovation and to trying out unexpected ideas and concepts. He expands the medium of sculpture, turning it into a platform for playful activities that transform the physical and emotional experience of the viewer/visitor into an integral and central part of his art.

Vajiko Chachkhiani
Heavy Metal Honey

29 June to 7 October 2018

Vajiko Chachkhiani’s works explore existential questions of life and our culture of remembrance. They are notable for the conceptual intelligence and quiet poetry with which he invests even violent themes such as war and death. Looking more closely, the viewer can share in the thought processes and research of the Georgian artist. He retells allegories of everyday life in seemingly familiar images but subtly undermines them with unexpected twists. The artist’s films, sculptures, photographs and extensive installations suggest different paths and weave them into a unified whole.
For the exhibition in Bonn, Chachkhiani develops a film and sculpture installation that reflects the cycle of life and the parallelism of stories. Heavy metal in the ground stands as a metaphor for history and honey – sweet but viscous – as a metaphor for internal family structures. Global and individual history share points of intersection at which they are inextricably linked. And it is only the moment of action and recognition that can flip a switch and set stories/history on a different course that changes the narrative.

The Playground Project

13 July to 28 October 2018

Between 1950 and 1980, the playground was a creative laboratory. In the cities of the industrialised world, a plethora of innovative, crazy, interesting and exciting projects were developed. Landscape architects, artists, activists and citizens sought to provide children with the best possible environment to play in and, at the same time, to rethink communal and urban life. The Playground Project captures this wealth of ideas in images, models, plans, books and numerous films as well as in play sculptures that invite visitors to slide, play hide and seek, laugh and run. Children, parents, playground designers, educators and architects are welcome to rediscover the playground of yesteryear and to imagine that of tomorrow.
Taking its starting point in the work of the pioneers of new playground concepts in the first half of the twentieth century, the exhibition shows how their ideas were received, adapted and developed in different countries. The playground is more than just an element of urban life; it also says much about the society that devised it. Last, but by no means least, the exhibition presents playgrounds as sites with a non-standard aesthetic of their own, where citizens of all ages identify with their city.

The Playground Project was developed as a travelling exhibition by Gabriela Burkhalter and adapted for its presentation at Bundeskunsthalle in cooperation with Kunsthalle Zürich.

Gurlitt: Status Report

14 September 2018 to 7 January 2019
Gropius Bau, Berlin

News of the discovery of the so-called ‘Gurlitt cache’ caused an international sensation in November 2013. The 1500 works of art, which the reclusive Cornelius Gurlitt (1932–2014), son of the art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt (1895–1956), had inherited from his father raised suspicions: had they been looted by the Nazis before and during the Second World War? To investigate these suspicions, the German government provided the funding necessary to conduct further research, while Cornelius Gurlitt agreed to restitute any work identified as looted. Thus far, four such works have been returned to the heirs of their rightful owners. Cornelius Gurlitt, who died in May 2014, bequeathed his collection to the Kunstmuseum Bern.
Couched in a wider historical context, the exhibition Gurlitt: Status Report is based on the current state of research into the ‘Gurlitt cache’. The exhibition presents a selection of some 250 works, covering a broad spectrum of the history of art, that have been hidden from public view for decades and thematises the provenance of each of the works. Thus, the exhibition sheds light on the complex history of the individual objects and on the fate of the collectors, art dealers and artists – most of them Jewish – who fell victim to the systematic persecution of the Nazi regime.

An exhibition of Bundeskunsthalle and Kunstmuseum Bern

Malerfürsten

28 September 2018 to 27 January 2019

In the Renaissance and the Baroque period, painters like Raphael, Titian, Rubens and van Dyck attained a special status that came with social recognition and courtly privilege. In their conduct and self-portraits, these artists presented themselves as Malerfürsten, as ‘painter princes’. The Malerfürst phenomenon, which transcends national borders and spans several centuries, forms the starting point of the exhibition. Focusing on the heyday of the Malerfürst in the nineteenth century, it showcases artists such as Frederic Lord Leighton, Hans Makart, Franz von Lenbach, Mihály Munkácsy, Jan Matejko, Friedrich August von Kaulbach and Franz von Stuck. It investigates their carefully crafted public personas, the veneration they inspired and their ability to draw on a network of powerful contacts to advance their social status. New reproductive print media, extravagantly staged exhibitions, studio visits and interviews in newspapers promoted the artists and their work, created a highly profitable international market and successfully established the social construct of the Malerfürst.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Imaginary Journeys

16 November 2018 to 17 February 2019

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, co-founder of the Brücke group, is one of the best-known German Expressionists. One of the leitmotifs of his life and work is the quest for the exotic and the primal, for far-off lands and cultures. It led him to create strikingly colourful images that conjure imaginary, far-away worlds, without ever leaving the everyday reality of his life.
Tracing the artist’s progress through Dresden, Berlin, Fehmarn and Davos, the exhibition sheds light on Kirchner’s career. With a selection of more than 180 paintings, the retrospective explores how the artist responded to social and artistic influences, engaging with them in ever new ways, always prepared to break new ground, both personally and pictorially.

The exhibition Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Imaginary Journeys is curated by Katharina Beisiegel and Franziska Brüggmann (Art Centre Basel) in collaboration with Dr. Thorsten Sadowsky (Director of the Kirchner Museum Davos). The exhibition is organised by the Art Centre Basel in cooperation with Bundeskunsthalle.