The Frankfurt Museum Landscape 2015

Exhibition highlights in the Main metropolis

Frankfurt/Main, 21rd October 2014 (tcf): What would a stay in the Main metropolis be without a visit of some of the city’s extensive cultural establishments? This year, Frankfurt’s museums will once again be presenting an interesting variety of shows and exhibitions highlighting the work of internationally renowned artists. One particular treat for art enthusiasts is sure to be the 200^th anniversary celebration of the world-famous Städel Museum.

The Museum of Applied Arts will kick off the year by showing an exhibition entitled “Buddha – 108 Encounters”, displaying Buddhist sculptures from India, China, Tibet, Southeast Asia, Korea and Japan. Buddha statues are said to exude spirituality in monasteries, home altars and hundreds of different places throughout Asia. For many, these sculptures embody the ideal of a peaceful world. Many of the artefacts on show have never been seen by the public eye (26^th February to 07^th July 2015).

In 2015, the Städel Museum will be celebrating its 200^th anniversary with an exhibition called “Monet and the Birth of Impressionism”. This show actually represents the first time that a Germany-based exhibition is dedicated solely to the creation and early development of the Impressionist movement. Aside from singling out Claude Monet as the key figure of Impressionism, the exhibition also draws attention to contemporaries like Auguste Renoir, Édouard Manet and Camille Pissarro, who together revolutionised the art of painting in a few short years. The exhibition puts on display more than 90 masterpieces on loan from various international art collections. In the works on display, artists deal with themes such as the relationship between mankind and nature, man’s love of leisure, and the acceleration of life through technical advancement (11^th March to 21^st June 2015). The museum has also developed a comprehensive digital exhibition for art enthusiasts to intuitively “stroll” through, supplemented by educational computer games for children, a prototype of a new digital art book and a range of online art history courses that allows visitors to prepare themselves for their upcoming museum visit.

With its exhibition on Isa Genzken, the MMK1 Museum of Modern Art is drawing attention to one of Germany’s most internationally renowned artists. Genzken’s works are born of a critical examination of European and American art. Since early 2000, Genzken has been integrating objects of the consumer world into her works, combining them with industrial materials as well as photographs and image fragments taken from popular media. The core of the exhibition, entitled “Isa Genzken. New Works”, consists of 20 sculptural figures and figure groups that show highly abstracts self-portraits of the artist. (14^th March to 31^st May 2015). The MMK 3, meanwhile, will be showing “Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said”, an exhibition focussing on experimental music and video art created by the artist, musician and author, Hassan Khan. Here, culture-specific artefacts including articles of clothing, music and poetry are presented through multifarious layers of videos, sculptures, text and sound (30^th January to 12^th April 2015).

 “The world has become a smaller place, because today we are able to circumnavigate it ten times more quickly than a century ago,” wrote Jules Verne in his bestselling novel, “Around the World in 80 Days”. At the end of the 19^th century, many shared the Frenchman’s global view of things. Back then, trains, steamships and the telegraph made the world seem not quite as daunting and unconquerable as before. On show at the Museum of Communication, “Around the World in 80 Things. The Jules Verne Code” presents items like a portable desk, a walking stick with an integrated compass, a length of underwater cable and many more interesting artefacts (26^th March to 30^th August 2015).

Daniel Richter from the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein is one of the most influential artists of his generation, having several years ago won one of Europe’s premier art awards. Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt will soon be presenting “Daniel Richter. Hello, I Love You”, an exhibition featuring images full of energy and potency, images that are gaudy yet secretive. Up until 2000, Richter’s works were of an abstract nature. Nowadays, they are more realistic (09^th October 2015 to 17^th January 2016).

At year’s end, the Museum of World Cultures will be showing the exhibition, “State of Emergency. Art, Collectives and Politics in South Africa”.In the 1980s, a new era began in South Africa, with resistance against apartheid escalating to the point of open civil war. This exhibition focuses on those early years of opposition, also looking at contemporary times and the prospects of a young generation of artists in South Africa (02^nd December 2015 to 24^th July 2016).

On the last Saturday of every month, admission to the museums and participation in a guided tour are absolutely free of charge. These “Satourdays” offer families the opportunity to take part in special workshops and theme tours. And with the convenient Frankfurt Card, available from the Frankfurt Tourist+Congress Board, visitors of the Main metropolis are able to use the city’s public transport system while also taking advantage of a wide range of cultural offers and other amenities at greatly reduced prices.

Contact:
Frankfurt Tourist+Congress Board
Elena Holschier-Rupprecht
Kaiserstraße 56
60329 Frankfurt/Main, Germany
Phone: +49 (0) 69 / 21 23 88 00
rupprecht@infofrankfurt.de