The Vilifying Exhibition "Degenerate Art" — Reception, Reconstruction, and Remembrance

Lecture 13.12.12, 7 pm

Lectures by Sabine Brantl and Mario-Andreas von Lüttichau

The vilifying exhibition “Degenerate Art” and the subsequent seizure of modern artworks constitute one of the darkest chapters in German art and museum history. The show opened in July 1937 in Munich’s Hofgarten building, just a few hundred meters from the former “House of German Art”. Research and exhibition projects focusing on the propaganda show continue to be conducted to this day.
In 1962, 25 years after the show opened, Haus der Kunst recalled the National Socialists’unprecedented iconoclasm in an exhibition called“Degenerate Art – Iconoclasm 25 Years Ago”, which featured nearly 400 works most of which had been confiscated from German museums during the National Socialist regime and labeled “degenerate”. The show, intended as “a memento; a sign of emphatic and reflective remembrance", did not reconstruct the vilifying exhibition of 1937; such a show was first staged 25 years later, on the occasion of the institution’s fiftieth anniversary. Organized by art historian Mario-Andreas von Lüttichau; it also served as the basis for the exhibition “The ‘Art City’ Munich 1937. National Socialism and Degenerate Art”, which was mounted in 1987 in Haus der Kunst.

In her lecture Sabine Brantl will speak about the 1962 exhibition and its preparations, background, and reactions, which she has researched based on previously unpublished documents. Mario-Andreas von Lüttichau will discuss the complicated process of reconstructing the Munich show of 1937. To conclude the event, Ulrich Wilmes will conduct a discussion with the speakers.

Mario-Andreas von Lüttichau, born in 1952, studied art history in Munich and received his PhD in 1983. After stints at the National Museums in Munich, the Berlinische Galerie for twentieth- century art and the Städtisches Kunstmuseum Bonn, he has worked since 1991 as the curator of nineteenth and twentieth-century painting and sculpture at the Museum Folkwang in Essen. He is also a lecturer in art history in Bonn and Düsseldorf.
Sabine Brantl is a historian and has headed the Historical Archives in Haus der Kunst since 2005. She is the author of the monograph “Haus der Kunst, Munich. A Place and Its History in National Socialism”, which explores the Haus der Kunst’s loaded and long-suppressed history. With Ulrich Wilmes she curated the exhibition “Histories in Conflict: Haus der Kunst and the Ideological Uses of Art, 1937–1955”.

In German

Admission: 5 € / 11 € including exhibition
Tickets available at the box office

Information
+49 89 21127 113
events (at) hausderkunst.de