Images & Texts

From 22 June to 25 September 2016, the Städel Museum is devoting a concentrated presentation of choice objects to the art of the Middle Ages. The exhibition “Heaven on Display” will feature one of the most striking church choir ensembles that have come down to us from the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, the Early Gothic Altenberg Altar, and its rich imagery. Apart from presenting the high altar retable – complete with a shrine cabinet, a statue of the Madonna and wings with painted depictions of the Passion and the Life of the Virgin – the show will also reunite the ensemble of extremely precious objects once surrounding the altar of the former convent of the Premonstratensian Sisters in Altenberg an der Lahn. Works of panel painting and sculpture as well as textile art and goldsmithery will bring a complex inter-referential system of imagery to life and impressively re-enact the interplay of various media in a specific choir ensemble of the early fourteenth century. The thirty-seven objects will be on view together for the first time since the convent’s secularization at the beginning of the nineteenth century. At its centre, the exhibition will feature the folding altarpiece that graced the high altar from around 1330 onward. Acquired for the Städel Museum in 1925, the wings of the altarpiece are among the earliest as well as the most outstanding works of German panel painting. Within the framework of the special exhibition, these key works of the Städel’s Old Masters collection will now be presented comprehensively in their historical, artistic and functional context. The show is based on the results of research carried out over several years as well as recent technological examinations of the retable conducted to gain insight into how the imagery of the high altar was viewed within, but also outside, the framework of worship services.

The exhibition is supported by the Kulturstiftung der Länder.

The spectrum of objects belonging to the Altenberg Altar and on display in the show is quite broad, encompassing reliquaries originally presented in the interior of the shrine cabinet, altar cloths of around 1330 embroidered with figural depictions and bearing patrons’ inscriptions, gold work and altar crosses of the thirteenth century, figural glass paintings from the early fourteenth-century choir window, etc. The survival of altar cloths belonging to an altar ensemble of the Early Gothic period is in itself unparalleled. Concurrently with the panel paintings, they were produced as embroidered pictorial compositions of imposing size and quality to decorate the altar table in front of the altarpiece. The exhibition will include two of these embroidered linen cloths and – in several original sections sent to Frankfurt from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and elsewhere especially for the show – also present the central apse window formerly displaying a pictorial cycle of its own behind the high altar retable.

The various objects of the convent church ensemble are interrelated both functionally and with regard to content. A depiction of an enthroned Madonna and Child being worshiped by the three Magi is not only found prominently placed in the central choir window’s glass paintings dating as far back as ca. 1300, but is also present in the richly polychrome sculpture at the centre of the retable of 1330 and in the pictorial programmes of the embroidered altar cloths.

“The deliberate repetition of one and the same motif in various media and in different locations reinforced the key importance attributed to the figure depicted here – the Mother of God as the main patroness of the Altenberg convent”, explains Jochen Sander, the exhibition’s curator. “Within that context, the high altar, with its embroidered, painted and sculpted images – but above all its salvation-bringing relics of saints – literally served the medieval viewer as a ‘display window’ of heaven.”

The wings of the altarpiece were hinged in such a way that the shrine could be completely opened or closed, but also partially opened, and thus permitted various ways of staging the central figure of the Virgin Mary and the reliquaries accompanying her. The presentation could be further varied through the choice of altar cloth – there were originally three – and its respective embroidered pictorial programme.

A 3D visualization and a control panel will enable the exhibition visitor to experience the synergy of the various objects of the choir from different simulated vantage points. An audio station will moreover explain how the altarpiece wings and the high altar were displayed on the various feast days of the Christian year.

The altar and other objects in the show remained in the Altenberg convent until its secularization, and in 1803 became the property of the princes of Solms-Braunfels. Many of them are therefore still in the holdings of the Braunfels castle museum today. In the nineteenth century, however, owing to the outstanding quality of the Altenberg church ensemble, there was a great amount of interest in the items, and many of them made their way into prominent collections worldwide – from pre-eminent private collections and those of the city of Frankfurt, the Wartburg-Stiftung in Eisenach and the Bayerische Nationalmuseum in Munich to the Hermitage in St Petersburg and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. The presentation at the Städel Museum will now reunite these objects, giving visitors an opportunity to experience them as a synthesis of the arts in their original context.

With the aid of the objects it showcases, the show will moreover offer a very personal impression of a saint who has undoubtedly been one of the most popular since the Middle Ages: Elizabeth of Hungary. Her youngest daughter Gertrude, entrusted to the care of the Altenberg sisters as a small child, became the convent’s superior at the age of twenty-one and played a decisive role in determining the church furnishings now on view in the exhibition. A tapestry executed around 1270 illustrates the life of Elizabeth and her husband, Landgrave Louis IV. This work may have been presented behind the altar mensa on high feast days before the installation of the altarpiece, and thus have been its textile predecessor. A second large tapestry with embroidered figures, likewise produced under Gertrude, was shown on days commemorating the family. The two hangings join with other objects from the convent – for example the arm reliquary of St Elizabeth, her silver jug and a ring allegedly once belonging to her husband – to provide insights into the story of Elizabeth of Hungary and her family. At the same time, the works bear witness to the far-reaching contacts cultivated by the landgrave’s daughter and thus to political history on the regional and international levels.

The special exhibition will moreover present the results of recent technical examinations of the retable paintings. These results and the textile works to be placed on view in the show will together provide entirely new insights and perspectives regarding the accessibility of the high altar imagery to medieval churchgoers and their reception at close range. The latest findings lead to the conclusion that the outsides of the altarpiece originally exhibited a decoration system comprising further depictions of saints and inscriptions that fit in seamlessly with the paintings on the wings. The sides and back, that is to say, were integral elements of the retable design and meant to be viewed at close quarters. The back of the altarpiece thus supplements the display side with an additional level of meaning and was apparently also conceived for extra-liturgical use, for example private devotions. These discoveries will create an entirely new foundation for the extremely suspenseful art-historical and cultural-historical discussion on the function of high altar imagery in the Middle Ages. The exhibition catalogue documents the recent findings. In addition, a publication to be released concurrently with the show – Aus der Nähe betrachtet. Bilder am Hochaltar und ihre Funktionen im Mittelalter (German edition), with the proceedings of the 2015 Passavant-Kolloquium at the Städel Museum, edited and introduced by Jochen Sander, Stefanie Seeberg and Fabian Wolf and with texts by numerous scholars of many countries – will present further detailed results and research contributions on these themes. The findings of the X-ray fluorescence examination will also be published digitally in detail at www.staedelmuseum.de/ausstellungen/altenberger-altar, where they will be permanently accessible.

HEAVEN ON DISPLAY. THE ALTENBERG ALTAR AND ITS IMAGERY

Curator: Prof Dr Jochen Sander, deputy director and head of the collection of Dutch, Flemish and German painting before 1800, Städel Museum
Exhibition dates: 22 June to 25 September 2016
Press preview: Tuesday, 21 June 2016, 11 am

Information: www.staedelmuseum.de, info@staedelmuseum.de, Telephone +49(0)69-605098-200, Fax +49(0)69-605098-112
Visitor services: telephone +49(0)69-605098-232, besucherdienst@staedelmuseum.de
Location: Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt am Main
Opening hours: Tue, Wed, Sat, Sun + holidays 10 am ‒ 6 pm, Thu, Fri 10 am ‒ 9 pm
Admission: 14 EUR, reduced 12 EUR, family ticket 24 EUR; admission free for children under 12; groups (minimum 10 persons): reduced admission fee per person. Groups are required to book in advance by contacting us at +49(0)69-605098-200 or info@staedelmuseum.de.
Advance ticket sales online at: tickets.staedelmuseum.de

General guided tours of the exhibition: Fri 7 pm, Sun 11 am. The price of the guided tour is included in the admission fee. The number of participants is limited; previous booking is not required.

Catalogue: The exhibition catalogue is being published by the Deutscher Kunstverlag and edited by Jochen Sander, with a foreword by Max Hollein and texts by Jochen Sander, Julia Schultz, Stefanie Seeberg, Christoph Krekel, Christiane Weber and Fabian Wolf. Bilingual edition in German and English language, 186 pages, 24.90 EUR (museum edition).
Accompanying publication: The exhibition will also be accompanied by the conference proceedings of the Passavant-Kolloquium of 13 and 14 November 2015, entitled Aus der Nähe betrachtet. Bilder am Hochaltar und ihre Funktionen im Mittelalter, edited by Jochen Sander, Stefanie Seeberg and Fabian Wolf, with contributions by Angela Kappeler, Stephan Kemperdick, Peter Knüvener, Christian N. Opitz, Victor M. Schmidt, Johannes Tripps, Gerhard Weilandt, Matthias Weniger, Jörg Widmaier and Susanne Wittekind; colour illustrations throughout, 192 pages, 19.90 EUR (German edition).

Social Media: The Städel Museum is communicating the exhibition on the social media with the hashtags #AltenbergerAltar and #Staedel.

Supported by: Kulturstiftung der Länder

Media Partner: Weltkunst

(Frankfurt am Main, 23 March 2016) After more than fifteen years in Frankfurt am Main, Max Hollein is resigning as head of the Städel Museum, Liebieghaus Sculpture Collection and Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt. As of 1 June 2016, Hollein will serve as director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF), the largest public art institution in Northern California and, with 1.6 million visitors in 2014, the fourth most frequently visited museum in the U.S.

Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Schweickart, the chairman of the Städel Museum foundation, commented on Hollein’s decision as follows: “We hugely regret Max Hollein’s imminent departure. The Städel and Liebieghaus are thus losing one of their most successful and most visionary directors, who took both museums to entirely new dimensions – not least of all by way of expansions in terms of content and spatial facilities alike – while also substantially developing their educational mission. The Städel has rarely reached the degree of success it boasts today. That is a circumstance we owe especially to Max Hollein. We are infinitely grateful to him and wish him all the best and continued great success for his personal future. For us, a challenging search now begins for a suitable successor whose responsibility will once again comprise the directorship of all three institutions.”

Frankfurt’s mayor Peter Feldmann, the chairman of the supervisory board of the Schirn Kunsthalle, observed: “Max Hollein’s decision deserves our respect, even if we deeply regret it and his departure means a great loss to the German cultural world. With his untiring work, Max Hollein has made the institutions under his leadership – above all the Schirn – the most distinguished, most well-known and most exciting art institutions in Europe, and granted all the citizens of the region unforgettable encounters with art and culture. For this we are highly indebted to him.”

“For fifteen years, Max Hollein has played a decisive role in cultural life in Frankfurt, and contributed more than anyone else to carving out a firm place for Frankfurt as an important centre of culture on the international museum map. We thank Max Hollein for his exceedingly successful work. The Städel Museum, the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt and the Liebieghaus Sculpture Collection are all thriving; at all three institutions, the course has been set for a positive future. We would naturally have loved to keep such an accomplished museum director with us longer, but now we wish him and his family all the best for the new challenge in San Francisco”, stated Prof. Dr. Felix Semmelroth, the Deputy Mayor in Charge of Culture of the City of Frankfurt.

Born in Vienna in 1969, Hollein has been the director of the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt since 2001, and of the Städel Museum and the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung since January 2006. All three cultural institutions have developed substantially under his direction and are today among Europe’s most successful art institutions.

“To leave Frankfurt after more than fifteen years is a difficult decision for myself and my family. This city and its people have grown very dear to our hearts. Essentially, things could have just kept going on this way indefinitely at the Städel, the Schirn and the Liebieghaus: all three institutions are in the very best of shape and can look ahead to a very positive future. For me, it has been a huge pleasure to have the opportunity to develop and promote countless projects for these institutions and with their outstanding employees, being borne along in the process by a sheer unending wave of support from so many sides, as well as an outstanding cultural policy programme. Even if I’m afraid it can’t possibly as wonderful as this anywhere else, the time really was ripe for me to take new step and face a new challenge. The American west coast in general and San Francisco in particular represent one of the most interesting focal points of cultural diversity and economic dynamics, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco constitute a large encyclopaedic museum institution at the heart of this unparalleled development, in which I would like to take active part”, Max Hollein explained.

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

With their two branches, the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park and the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in Golden Gate Park, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF) constitute the largest public art institution in the city of San Francisco and among the most prominent museums in California. The encyclopaedic collection of more than 128,000 works is divided up into seven departments and collection areas with emphases on American and European art. The FAMSF employ a staff of altogether 520, along with some 600 volunteers, and have one of the largest societies of friends in the U.S. with more than 100,000 members.

PRESS CONTACT
Axel Braun
Städel Museum, Dürerstrasse 2, D-60596 Frankfurt, e-mail: braun@staedelmuseum.de; telephone: +49 (0)69 60 50 98-170, mobile +49 (0)171 5644061, fax: +49 (0)69 60 50 98-188

Pamela Rohde
Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Römerberg, D-60311 Frankfurt, e-mail: pamela.rohde@schirn.de;
telephone: +49.69.29 98 82-148, fax: +49.69.29 98 82-240

The Städel Museum in Frankfurt has developed an innovative educational format that seeks to set a new standard in the realm of online education: “Art History Online – The Städel Course on Modern Art” is a comprehensive, free online course, made up of films, texts, interactive tasks and an additional timeline covering more than two hundred years of art history, from the eighteenth century to the present day. The large-scale project has been realized in cooperation with the Art History Chair and the Centre for Digital Cultures at Leuphana University of Lüneburg. Based on more than 250 works from the Städel Museum’s collection, this online course provides users with an enriching learning experience. In contrast to so-called Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), “Art History Online” supports flexible self-study in European art history, accompanied by the noted German actor Sebastian Blomberg. The varied multimedia programme addresses a broad, international audience with an interest in art, teaching both a toolset of visual skills and background knowledge to further enrich their encounters with modern art. Along with introductory and explanatory films on various major topics, users will find hands-on learning formats, detailed texts, and a comprehensive timeline of historical events, artists, and key works of modern art. In total the course offers up to forty hours of material which users can delve into at varying depths, depending on their individual interests. Whereas Sebastian Blomberg serves as a guide through the course, the sound was designed by the Berlin musician Boys Noize.
The new digital offer is designed for all who wish to attain a knowledge of art history and iconography in an appealing manner and on their own schedule. It responds to a growing international interest in understanding the history of modern art while at the same time shedding light on historical developments in society at large. Serving as both introduction and follow-up, the online course is as attractive to users who know nothing at all about art history as for those with basic knowledge. It can be used in combination with school and college courses or professional training, or simply as an entertaining and informative look at art history for its own sake. This offer is in keeping with the Städel Museum’s overriding desire to extend its educational efforts far beyond the physical boundaries of the museum and, in an up-to-date and innovative way, inspire various target groups to engage with art and culture.

The online course was sponsored by the Städelscher Museums-Verein e.V.

Course method and structure
The Städel Museum’s online course provides a varied learning environment for guided self-study. In doing so, it makes use of the possibilities offered by the digital realm, for example a range of textual links in different mediums. Based on roughly 250 works selected from the Städel’s own collection, the programme effectively combines films, texts, a comprehensive timeline and interactive tasks in which users can put their newly acquired knowledge to the test. Questions and problems that introduce multiple perspectives on specific works and subject matter guide the users’ approach to art. Instead of presenting art-historical facts in a dry, chronological sequence, the Städel Museum’s online course reveals relationships between artists and works, even those of very different epochs. It teaches how to understand the visible iconography and how to discover hidden meanings. Users develop a sense of the different contexts in which works are created, they see how and why artists and artists’ groups come together and make reference to each other, and how different institutions deal with art. The programme ultimately enables those who complete it to appreciate art more independently and critically.

The course is divided into five modules. Instead of following a chronological order, these modules focus on important topics, each building on the last:

• Module 1 – Learning to see: analysis of pictorial forms and motifs
• Module 2 – Discovering what is hidden: the different contexts in which artworks are created
• Module 3 – Exploring positions: artistic programmes and classification systems
• Module 4 – Finding connections: correspondences between artists and their works
• Module 5 – Collecting and presenting: the museum and its role in the world of art

A roughly five-minute film at the beginning of each module introduces its main theme. These films are entertainingly moderated by the stage and screen actor Sebastian Blomberg. Along with detailed texts, each building on the one before, films on individual works and topics provide relevant art-historical and iconographic information on which the user can draw while working on the tasks. The timeline, with information about works, artists, styles and schools as well as historical and cultural contexts, can be consulted at any time. Each module ends with a wrap-up review of its major focus. Users can progress through the five modules at their own pace, stopping to explore a topic in greater detail or moving on to the next. An in-depth study of the course takes around forty hours.

Signing up
Interested parties need only register at the website onlinecourse.staedelmuseum.de – and can then start the course immediately. It is offered at no cost, and can be used on computers and tablets. It is optimized for modern browsers.

Art education in digital space
“Art History Online – The Städel Course on Modern Art” was sponsored by the Städelscher Museums-Verein, a society of friends of the museum established in 1899. In addition to facilitating new acquisitions and ensuring the growth of the museum’s collection, this association is strongly involved in the promotion of scholarly work and educational projects like the present one. The realization of the Städel’s first online course has been a joint effort of the society and the museum. Given the increasing digitalization of everyday life, it is crucial for cultural institutions to expand their educational mandate to include the digital realm and provide free programmes offering all potential users new access to art and culture. When the Frankfurt museum celebrated its two-hundred-year jubilee in 2015, it pledged to pursue a course of “digital extension.” This online course in modern art is a first demonstration of how up-to-the-minute, innovative, and – best of all – entertaining digital education in the field of art can be.


Art History Online –
The Städel Course on Modern Art

URL: http://onlinecourse.staedelmuseum.de
Launch: 16 November 2016
Technical requirements: The course can be used on computers and tablets and is optimized for modern browsers.

A production of the Städel Museum in collaboration with the Art History Chair and the Centre for Digital Cultures at Leuphana University of Lüneburg

Overall concept: Dr. Chantal Eschenfelder (Director of Education, Städel Museum), Prof. Beate Söntgen (Professor of Art History, Leuphana University of Lüneburg), Herbert Schwarze (dramatic advisor, Berlin)
Technical concept, design and realization: agenturfuerkrankemedien GmbH, Berlin
Sponsor: Städelscher Museums-Verein e.V.
Additional support from: maze pictures GmbH, Munich & Berlin