The Wiener Library’s summer exhibition showcases the remarkable work of German Jewish photographer Gerty (Gertrud) Simon, and features many of her original prints from the 1920s and 1930s. Simon was a once-prominent photographer who captured many important political and artistic figures in Weimar Berlin, including Kurt Weill, Lotte Lenya, Käthe Kollwitz, Max Liebermann and Albert Einstein. In the 1930s, as a refugee from Nazism in Britain, Simon rapidly re-established her studio, and portrayed many significant individuals there, such as Sir Kenneth Clark, Dame Peggy Ashcroft and Aneurin Bevan. Continue reading “#FindingGerty”
Category: Exhibition
Weimar at German Historical Museum
The Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin has opened the flagship exhibition of this year’s Weimar centenary celebrations.
WEIMAR: THE ESSENCE AND VALUE OF DEMOCRACY runs until September and highlights the central challenges in politics and society faced by contemporaries of the Weimar Republic. The exhibition is expressly addressed at “current debates about the crisis of liberal democracy” and features a Democracy Lab, aiming “to build awareness for the fact that this form of government lives on the participation and engagement of all citizens, is marked by the continuous negotiating of different opinions and positions, and in this way is constantly able to further develop itself.”
Exhibition on Alfred Flechtheim
Alfred Flechtheim, the art dealer who brought Picasso to Berlin and founded the magazine Querschnitt, was one of the most important figures of Weimar Germany’s cultural scene. 80 years after his death, the Georg Kolbe Museum has put on a show about his life and work, featuring works by the artists he represented: Continue reading “Exhibition on Alfred Flechtheim”
Exhibition on Jazz Age fashion
The Fashion & Textile Museum in London is currently showing clothing and fashion photography from the 1920s, “a glittering display of haute couture and ready-to-wear fashion from 1919 to 1929”. According to the exhibition catalogue, “women’s clothing in the 1920s reflected dizzying social change on an unprecedented scale. From Paris and London to New York and Hollywood, the decade following the Great War offered the modern woman a completely new style of dressing.”
The exhibition programme includes Charleston dance classes and a talk by Caroline Cox about “1920s Hair & Beauty”. Continue reading “Exhibition on Jazz Age fashion”
Karl Schenker exhibition
The Museum Ludwig in Cologne is hosting an exhibition of works by Karl Schenker, one of Weimar’s most famous society photographers: “Everybody who was anybody had their portrait taken in his Berlin studio on the famous Kurfürstendamm.” Many thanks to Dorothy Price for drawing our attention to this fabulous show! Continue reading “Karl Schenker exhibition”
Beyond Berlin: Working-class photography in the Ruhr area
The Ruhrmuseum Essen is currently hosting an exhibition of Erich Grisar’s documentary photography from 1928-1933. Grisar is primarily known as a working-class writer and journalist, and this new show puts his photography work centre-stage for the first time. Spiegel Online features a selection of photos from the exhibition.
It’s Weimar Time Again!
Over the past weeks, three new exhibitions have opened on two different continents, almost at the same time, that put Weimar culture back into the spotlight of wider public attention.
In New York, Berlin Metropolis: 1918-1933 at the Neue Galerie “explores the city using a multi-media approach, revealing this complex period through painting, drawing, sculpture, collage, photography, architecture, film, and fashion.” In LA, New Objectivity: Modern German Art in the Weimar Republic, 1919-1933, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art claims to be “the first comprehensive exhibition in the United States to explore the dominant artistic trends of this period.” Meanwhile, in Berlin, Tanz auf dem Vulkan. Das Berlin der Zwanziger Jahre im Spiegel der Künste at the Stadtmuseum Berlin promises to deliver for the first time a “comprehensive overview” of Berlin’s status as the European centre of the avant-garde in Europe during this period. Continue reading “It’s Weimar Time Again!”
“Dancing on the Volcano” exhibition
The myth of the “Roaring Twenties” and of 1920s Berlin is rearing its head again. From September, the Stadtmuseum Berlin hosts the exhibition “Dancing on the Volcano. The Berlin of the Twenties as Reflected in the Arts” aiming at showcasing “the mood and social climate in the 1920s, particularly in the pulsating metropolis of Berlin”.
Sadly, there seems to be no historical awareness of the “legend of the Twenties” (in Helmuth Plessner’s words) and its retrospective, nostalgic quality.
Exhibition about Ullstein’s ‘Gleichschaltung’
In 2013, the interest in the history of the Ullstein publishing house seems to pick up. Besides a major conference in April, an up-coming exhibition in June – as part of the Berlin-wide theme year Diversity Destroyed – will look at Ullstein’s Gleichschaltung after 1933. A dedicated website already gives a good introduction to the topic.
The exhibition is organised by Deutsches Presemuseum im Ullsteinhaus, an association of scholars, artists and journalists aiming to establish a German ‘museum of the press’ in Ullstein’s impressive former printing facility in Tempelhof, erected in 1927. A cause worth supporting!
1920s at ‘Long Night of Museums’ in Berlin
This year, Berlin’s ‘Long Night of Museums‘ is dedicated to the culture of the 1920s. On this biannual event, over 80 museums and cultural institutions all over the city offer late-night events with a bus shuttle service running between all venues.
Continue reading “1920s at ‘Long Night of Museums’ in Berlin”
1920s Berlin in London
If you are in London this weekend, make sure to visit the The Rest is Noise festival at the Southbank Centre. Saturday and Sunday are dedicated to ‘Berlin in the 20s & 30s’, featuring plays, talks, lectures, workshops and films, including a rare production of Brecht and Weill’s Songspiel. The Guardian has more info.
Remembering 1933
To mark the 80th anniversary of the Nazis’ rise to power (and the end of the Weimar Republic), Berlin hosts a theme year called “Diversity Destroyed“, commemorating ‘the historical diversity that was destroyed by the National Socialist regime in the knowledge that openness, tolerance and pluralism are values which our society must both protect and consciously engage with time and again.’ Continue reading “Remembering 1933”
Virtual Tour of 1920s Berlin
The exhibition Berlin Transit on Jewish migrants from Eastern Europe in the 1920s at the Jüdisches Museum is (sadly) over already, but its website is still a great resource. Among other things, it offers a virtual tour of important places of Jewish life in 1920s Berlin.
Bauhaus in London
From 3 May, the Barbican in London will stage ‘the biggest Bauhaus exhibition in the UK in over 40 years’, including works from Josef and Anni Albers, Marianne Brandt, Marcel Breuer, Walter Gropius, Johannes Itten, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Hannes Meyer, László Moholy-Nagy, Oskar Schlemmer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Gunta Stölzl, as well as a two-week summer school led by leading design practitioners.
To mark the occasion, the Britsh newspaper The Guardian has published a celebratory slide-show and an interesting article about the history of the Bauhaus.