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On the Way to the Future - the Städel's Digital Extension

200 Years Städel: Facts & Figures

200 YEARS STÄDEL “THE FRANKFURT CITIZENS’ MUSEUM: A GIFT FOR EVERYONE” – GERMANY’S OLDEST CIVIC MUSEUM FOUNDATION CELEBRATES ITS ANNIVERSARY YEAR WITH TOP-NOTCH EXHIBITIONS, A GRAND PUBLIC CELEBRATION, PROMINENT ADDITIONS TO ITS COLLECTION AND A MAJOR EXPANSION OF ITS EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMME INTO THE DIGITAL REALM

An eventful year awaits the Städel Museum founded in 1815. Germany’s oldest civic museum foundation is celebrating “200 Years Städel”. In honour of its anniversary, the Städel will be featuring a large number of top-notch special exhibitions from Claude Monet to John Baldessari, a major expansion of its digital educational programme, prominent additions to its collection and new publications – all under the motto “The Frankfurt citizens’ museum: a gift for everyone”. On 15 March 2015, the two-hundredth anniversary of its founding day, the Städel will moreover host a grand public celebration with free admission and a wide range of offers throughout the museum and its grounds.

The anniversary year got off to a start with two very special birthday gifts: The chairman of the Städelscher Museums-Verein, Sylvia von Metzler, presented Städel director Max Hollein and chairman of the administration Nikolaus Schweickart with the painting The Assumption of the Virgin of 1596/97 by Guido Reni (1575–1642) as well as a precious drawing by Edgar Degas (1834–1917). For the purchase of the Reni painting, the museum is indebted to the members of the Städelscher Museums-Verein for the successful donation drive they carried out. The acquisition of Degas’s Study of a Nude (Étude de Nu) (ca. 1888–92), on the other hand, was made possible by the generous donation of a single Frankfurt patron of the arts. These prominent works close two gaps in the Städel collection, which spans seven hundred years of art, and are at the same time a harbinger of things to come over the course of the anniversary year: in 2015, Frankfurt’s citizens’ museum will successfully continue its two-hundred-year tradition of dedicated patronage with a large number of gifts, donations and other forms of support, to be publicized separately in due time.

What Johann Friedrich Städel (1728–1816) left behind can be understood as an exceptionally generous and farsighted gift. On 15 March 2015, the banker and businessman of Frankfurt signed the third and final version of his will, in which he bequeathed his entire fortune and his art collection to the foundation that was to be named the “Städelsches Kunstinstitut”. In addition to his donation of immense material and art-historical assets, he thus introduced a visionary idea that has lost nothing of its impact to this day. The Städel – Germany’s most prominent civic cultural foundation – serves as an outstanding model of broad-based civic engagement which continues to contribute decisively to the preservation and further development of this cultural institution. Together, the passion of a single citizen and the dedication of many gave rise to a comprehensive collection of art dating from the Middle Ages to the present, one of Europe’s most prestigious museums and a prominent fixture in Frankfurt’s civic society.

As a means of shedding light on the founding vision – but also the museum’s present state and significance – the Städel has designed an anniversary wall for its main stairway. There, on more than fifty square metres, the founding year 1815 and the anniversary 2015 are juxtaposed. What was the nature of the Städel collection in 1815, and who were the visitors who came to Johann Friedrich Städel’s residence to admire his art? What are the dimensions of the Städel museum’s collection today – and in what ways can it be experienced? What has changed fundamentally in the past two hundred years, and what has remained the same? With the aid of historical and anecdotal examples, numerical comparisons and visual impressions, the anniversary wall provides insights into the beginnings of Germany’s oldest civic museum foundation and what it is today.

The Städel is moreover celebrating its anniversary with a substantial number of large-scale research and exhibition projects. Among the highlights will be the special exhibition “Monet and the Birth of Impressionism” (11 March to 21 June 2015), presenting some one hundred masterpieces by Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley, Paul Cézanne and others, as well as a group exhibition on figurative painting in the German Federal Republic of the 1980s (“The 80s”, 22 July to 18 October 2015). The anniversary exhibition planned for the autumn, “The Masterworks in Dialogue: Eminent Guests for the Anniversary” (7 October 2015 to 24 January 2016) will present approximately eighty select works from all areas of the Städel collection side by side with masterworks and companion pieces from the world’s most renowned museums. Spectacular temporary “partnerships” and long-yearned-for “encounters” will thus come about. The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of lectures by the Städel’s curators on the history of the collection; the opening address will be given by Daniel Kehlmann. From 5 November 2015 onward, the Städel’s exhibition annex will moreover feature a very special series of works by the American concept and media artist John Baldessari. Conceived specifically for the Städel, the series will be based on objects in the collection: masterpieces by Lucas Cranach the Elder, Agnolo Bronzino, Dirck van Baburen, Maria Lassnig and others will serve as visual material for the large-scale pictorial collages by the world-famous artist (until 24 January 2016).

The two-hundred-year existence of the Städel Museum will also provide the occasion for a fundamental redefinition of the diverse educational programme and the visitor experience offered by Germany’s oldest civic museum foundation. Against the background of the increasing digitalization of everyday life, the expansion of the museum’s educational responsibilities into the digital realm represents a key building block for the Frankfurt institution. To this end, the Städel has initiated a wide range of projects to be made public over the course of the anniversary year: A comprehensive digital exhibit platform is presently in the making – a tool as intelligent as it is intuitive that will allow visitors to “roam” our collections at their leisure. Innovative and educational computer games for children are also undergoing realization, online art-history courses are being developed in cooperation with the Leuphana Universität, the prototype of a completely novel digital art book is being produced, and the educational “digitorial” already available now offers a modern means of preparing for visits to exhibitions. Starting in February 2015, Städel visitors will moreover have free access to WiFi throughout the museum and its grounds, allowing them, for example, to download the Städel app (available from March onward), listen to the audio guide on their own devices, or simply document their museum experience and share it by way of the social media. A newly developed “cabinet of digital curiosities” right in the museum will supplement the media table by providing means of trying out the new exhibit platform and the app game for children.

In addition to the new digital formats, a commemorative publication entitled …zum Besten hiesiger Stadt und Bürgerschaft. 200 Jahre Städel will be published in March by the Prestel Verlag. In addition to essays by Städel authors such as Max Hollein and Jochen Sander, it will contain a contribution by Thomas Gaehtgens (director of the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles) on the development of the Städel Museum from Johann Friedrich Städel’s foundation to the European institution it is today. Florian Illies will devote his article to the “matter of taste”, author Martin Mosebach will speculate on the founder’s personality, Isabel Pfeiffer-Poensgen (secretary general of the Kulturstiftung der Länder) will address the significance and development of civic engagement for art and culture in Germany, Christoph Stölzl (president of the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt in Weimar) will write about the foundation as an expression of the civic will, and Wolfgang Ullrich (professor of art theory and media theory at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe and pro-rector for research) will report on museums and the social media. Finally, a conversation between Sylvia von Metzler, Nikolaus Schweickart and Felix Semmelroth (Deputy Mayor in Charge of Culture of the City of Frankfurt am Main) moderated by Tim Sommer (editor in chief of art – Das Kunstmagazin) will revolve around volunteer involvement in the area of art and culture, the past and future of the Städel Museum and the importance of the foundation in and for Frankfurt. A series of scenes by the Frankfurt photographer Katrin Binner will provide an introduction.

200 YEARS STÄDEL

Information: www.staedelmuseum.de, info@staedelmuseum.de, telephone +49(0)69-605098-0, fax +49(0)69-605098-111 Visitor services: +49(0)69-605098-232, besucherdienst@staedelmuseum.de Location: Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt am Main Museum opening hours: Tue, Wed, Sat and Sun 10 am ‒ 6 pm, Thu and Fri 10 am ‒ 9 pm Advance ticket sales at: tickets.staedelmuseum.de

Social media: The Städel Museum is communicating the anniversary on the social media with the hashtag #200jahrestaedel

Media partners: 3sat, Fraport AG, Media Frankfurt GmbH, Verkehrsgesellschaft Frankfurt am Main Culture partner: hr2-kultur

A GIFT FROM THE STÄDELSCHER MUSEUMS-VEREIN: THE STÄDEL RECEIVES PROMINENT WORKS BY GUIDO RENI AND EDGAR DEGAS FOR ITS BIRTHDAY GUIDO RENI (1575–1642), THE ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN, CA. 1596/97; EDGAR DEGAS (1834–1917), STUDY OF A NUDE (ÉTUDE DE NU), CA. 1888–92

Frankfurt's Städel Museum, founded in 1815, has started its anniversary year with two exceptional new acquisitions ‒ The Assumption of the Virgin of 1596/97 by Guido Reni (1575‒1642), and the precious Study of a Nude (Étude de Nu) (1888–92), a drawing by Edgar Degas (1834–1917). Both works are entering the collection as special birthday presents from the Städelscher Museums-Verein. The purchasing funds for the Reni painting were raised entirely by means of a successful donation drive and the outstanding dedication of numerous members of the association founded in 1899. The acquisition of the Degas drawing was made possible by a single donation from a Frankfurt patron of the arts.

In the Städel's Old Masters collection, Reni's Assumption of the Virgin closes a major gap in the area of early Italian Baroque painting. Executed on copper, this gem of a painting is one of the few surviving early works by Reni, an artist of key significance for the development of Baroque painting in Bologna and Rome whose works still contribute strongly to shaping our image of the Italian Baroque today. Degas's Study of a Nude (Étude de Nu) dates from the final phase of the artist's career and is an important milestone on the way to the modern art of the twentieth century. The work represents a valuable enhancement to the nineteenth-century French drawing holdings of the Städel Museum's Department of Prints and Drawings.

“The continual expansion of the Städel collection is one of our association's chief goals. Since its founding in 1899, the Museums-Verein has already been responsible for the purchase of more than one thousand prestigious artworks. We are very proud and happy that ‒ thanks to the exceptional support of many of our members ‒ we have now succeeded in fulfilling this great wish for the Städel on its two-hundredth birthday”, commented Sylvia von Metzler, chairman of the Städelscher Museums-Verein.

“For the past two hundred years, the development of the Städel collection has built on the dedicated patronage of many citizens. The two most recent acquisitions not only represent superb additions to our holdings and definitive works in the history of European art, but are also a living symbol of art patronage. The Städelscher Museums-Verein and its members are more active than ever before – their generosity fills me with the utmost respect and gratitude.

Whereas the donation campaign for the purchase of the painting by Guido Reni received generous support from Fritz and Waltraud Mayer, Ibeth Biermann, Dieter and Ingrid Seydler as well as a large number of further large and small donations from association members and sponsoring institutions, the acquisition of the Degas drawing was made possible by a single donation from a Frankfurt patron of the arts. The total volume of the two purchases amounts to some two million euros.

GUIDO RENI (1575–1642) THE ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN, CA. 1596/97 OIL ON COPPER, 58 X 44.4 CM In the seventeenth century, Guido Reni was one of Europe's most successful and most highly celebrated painters. His art was greatly in demand among prestigious patrons of the nobility and the clergy. His influence made itself felt above all in the religious imagery of European painting, which it continued to change and shape even after the Baroque epoch had come to an end. Executed around 1596/97, Reni's painting places the Virgin at the pictorial centre. She is surrounded by angels and painted in the canonical colours ‒ with a red robe, a blue mantle and a white veil. She floats on a throne of clouds, her arms spread out wide, her gaze lifted heavenward in the transfigured manner typical of Reni. In art history, this form of depiction is referred to as the “himmelnde Blick” (“heaven-directed gaze”). As Reni's career continued, it was to become his trademark. A golden radiance fills the pictorial space. The celestial character of the light is an allusion to God the Father, who will receive Mary in heaven. For this composition, Reni took his orientation above all from two major altarpieces of the Assumption of the Virgin (1592‒94) by Annibale Carracci (1560‒1609) and his brother Agostino Carracci (1557‒1602), today in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna. Both painted just a few years before Reni's work, they supplied the motivic inspiration for the figure of the Virgin seated on the throne of clouds with outspread arms, as well as for the angels surrounding her. At the same time, however, Reni's interpretation of the theme is not only entirely different, but can even be said to revolutionize the conventions for depicting the motif. He has translated the pathos of Mary's dramatic ascension ‒ a mode of representation learned from the High Renaissance and above all the late Raphael ‒ into a gentle upward floating full of poetic harmony and a clear pictorial composition based on geometrical shapes. The three main figures ‒ Mary and the two large angels in the foreground ‒ form an isosceles triangle. In fact, Reni's work seems to anticipate the revolving oval compositions that would come to be favoured in Baroque painting. In its manner of depiction, the work embodies the transition from Late Mannerism to the Early Baroque. “Reni's Assumption of the Virgin is a masterpiece and a key work of the Italian Baroque. After more than four centuries in private ownership, at the Städel it will be made accessible to the public for the first time in its history”, explained Bastian Eclercy, the head of the collection of pre-1800 Italian, French and Spanish painting at the Städel, who is very happy about the acquisition. The painting's provenance can be traced without interruption back to the artist's lifetime. Already his early biographer Carlo Cesare Malvasia (1616‒1693) reported in 1678 that among Reni's earliest works was an Assumption of the Virgin painted on copper in the Sampieri collection in Bologna ‒ undoubtedly the very work now in the Städel's possession. It was presumably commissioned by the jurist Astorre di Vincenzo Sampieri, a canon of the Cathedral of San Pietro in Bologna and the owner of an important art collection. After being passed down in the family for centuries, in 1811 the painting found its way into the collection of Eugène de Beauharnais, Napoleon's viceroy and the later Duke of Leuchtenberg. In Munich it was Johann David Passavant (1787‒1861) who catalogued the superb Leuchtenberg collection in 1851 and first had it reproduced in engravings. In 1917 the work was purchased by Nordiska, a Stockholm art dealer; sometime after 1925 it made its way from there into the collection of Rudolph Poeschel, where it verifiably remained until 1961. In that year, the Assumption of the Virgin entered a private Swiss collection by way of auction. Finally, in 2013 it was acquired by Jean-Luc Baroni, a London-based Old Masters dealer, at an auction carried out by Koller in Zürich; Baroni then sold it to the Städelscher Museums-Verein in 2014. Thanks to the acquisition of Reni's Assumption, the Städel collection now reflects all the more clearly the key role played by Italy in the history of Baroque painting. In the Städel's large Italian gallery, the newly acquired masterpiece can be linked to a somewhat later painting by Reni, Christ at the Column (1604), but also to the most recent new addition to the Old Masters collection, Jusepe de Ribera's Saint James the Greater, for which the Städel has a donation by the patron Dagmar Westberg to thank. Owing to this happy coincidence, the Städel is now for the first time in a position to present the two most important roots of European Baroque painting with the aid of two superb works: whereas Ribera's Saint James stands for the school of Caravaggio, Reni's early Assumption of the Virgin represents the academy of the Carracci and the reforms introduced in painting around 1600.

EDGAR DEGAS (1834–1917) STUDY OF A NUDE (ÉTUDE DE NU), CA. 1888–92 CHARCOAL AND PASTEL ON PAPER, 55.8 X 36.8 CM Edgar Degas is among the most prominent French artists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. World famous for his portraits, ballet and jockey scenes, as well as figures of women bathing or combing their hair, he is today considered one of the pioneers of modern art. In the drawing acquired for the Städel Museum, Degas depicted a close-up view of a female body, but not in such a way as to parade his model to the viewer. On the contrary, this study demonstrates the quality of dissociated perception so typical of Degas's art, and takes it to its very limits: the artist has achieved a delicate interplay between respectful observation and sensual depiction. This late nude conveys an undeniable impression of plasticity and concentrated energy. In the process, Degas strips her of her individuality, while extracting from her form an immediacy and expressive power virtually classical in nature. “Edgar Degas returned to certain key themes again and again. His approach can be described as a process of the constant intensification of his artistic experiences. The nude drawing dating from the period between 1888 and 1892 refers the beholder to his paintings as well as his sculptural work, and is thus capable of standing for Degas in his entirety”, observes Jutta Schütt, the head of the Städel Museum's collection of post-1750 prints and drawings. The work bears the Degas estate stamp (“Lugt 658”). It remained in the artist's studio until his death in 1917 and was auctioned off with the rest of his estate in 1918. In the decades that followed it alternated between private collections and the art market in Belgium, New York (1949), London and California (since 1981). The Städel Museum's Department of Prints and Drawings has in its holdings a small but extremely high-quality group of nineteenth-century French drawings, among the best in Germany. Until now, Degas has been represented at the Städel by the early drawing Portrait of Madame Gaujelin (1867) and the monotype Repos sur le lit (ca. 1876/77). The new acquisition will soon be made available to interested visitors in the Study Hall of the Department of Prints and Drawings during the department’s regular opening hours.

THE STÄDELSCHER MUSEUMS-VEREIN The Städelscher Museums-Verein, with whose aid both purchases were realized, has been supporting the museum since 1899. Its more than 7,600 members champion the cause of the Städel Museum as well as the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung. Among the Städelscher Museums-Verein's chief aims is the continual expansion of the collections through the purchase of artworks. Since its founding, the association has already acquired more than one thousand works for the Städel.

200 YEARS STÄDEL When he committed his will to paper in 1815, Johann Friedrich Städel laid the cornerstone for Germany's oldest civic museum foundation. The 15th of March 2015 will be the two-hundredth anniversary of that momentous day. The Städel Museum will be honouring its anniversary all year long with a large number of top-notch exhibition and research projects, numerous prominent acquisitions and additions to the collection, a grand public celebration, and the major expansion of its education programme, especially in the digital realm.

Städel Museum Information: www.staedelmuseum.de, info@staedelmuseum.de, telephone +49(0)69-605098-0, fax +49(0)69-605098-111 Visitor services: +49(0)69-605098-232, besucherdienst@staedelmuseum.de Location: Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt am Main Museum opening hours: Tue, Wed, Sat and Sun 10 am ‒ 6 pm, Thu and Fri 10 am ‒ 9 pm Department of Prints and Drawings opening hours: Wed 2 ‒ 5 pm, Thu 2 ‒ 7 pm, Fri 2 ‒ 5 pm

200 Years Städel: Exhibition Program

Today Dagmar Westberg is celebrating her one-hundredth birthday at the Städel Museum. On this occasion, the founder of the Dagmar-Westberg-Stiftung and long-time Städel patron is donating an extremely precious and art-historically important work to the Frankfurt museum for its Old Masters collection: the painting Saint James the Greater of ca. 1615/16 by Jusepe de Ribera (1591–1652). Ribera is among the most important painters of the seventeenth century, and one who unites the artistic achievements of two European schools in a single person. Born in the province of Valencia, he can be considered the most prominent Spanish painter after Diego Velázquez (1599–1660). He spent his entire life in Italy, however – first in Rome, then in the Spanish vice-kingdom of Naples – and was accordingly also one of the most influential painters of the Italian Baroque. In the Städel Museum, this masterwork will be presented in the large Italian gallery with immediate effect, and thus, after four centuries in private ownership, be placed on view in a public collection for the first time and permanently.

“For nearly two hundred years now, the dedication of individual citizens has been a cornerstone in the continuing existence of the Städel Museum. Within this tradition, Dagmar Westberg is a shining example, and in every respect an outstanding figure to whom we are deeply indebted. Her donation of the Saint James the Greater by Ribera can unquestionably be considered a milestone in our museum’s long collection history. We could not have dreamed of a more wonderful gift – and on the special occasion of her one-hundredth birthday, no less. We are delighted and proud that Ms Westberg is celebrating her day of honour in and with the Städel”, museum director Max Hollein commented.

Born in Hamburg in 1914 and a resident of Frankfurt, Dagmar Westberg is one of the most prominent patrons of the city’s Städel Museum. In the past years, she has already taken her birthdays as occasions for supporting the Städel with major donations of artworks and funds. In 2008, for example, Westberg presented the museum with, among other works, the altarpiece by the “Master of the von Groote Adoration”, a triptych dating from the first third of the sixteenth century and one of the most outstanding Netherlandish works of its time. In 2013, Dagmar Westberg enabled the museum to purchase a rare lithograph by Francisco Goya and a print by Edvard Munch. With funds from the Dagmar Westberg foundation she moreover regularly supports important purchases for the Städel’s Department of Prints and Drawings. Over the past years, drawings by Carl Spitzweg, Max Klinger, Henri Michaux and Almut Heise and works of printmaking by Max Beckmann, Candida Höfer, Tacita Dean and Paul Morrison – to name just a few important examples – have been acquired with her help. Ms Westberg also espouses the general interests and concern of the Städel and has assumed permanent patronage of a gallery in the museum’s Old Masters department.

Born to a Baltic-Hamburg family of entrepreneurs, Dagmar Westberg worked for many years for the American consulates general in Hamburg, Berlin and – from the end of World War II onward – Frankfurt am Main. Already her great-uncle Oskar Troplowitz, the inventor of such products as Leukoplast, Hansaplast, Tesa tape and Nivea and responsible for the success of the Beiersdorf company, was a great art patron. He bequeathed twenty-six paintings to the Hamburg Kunsthalle, including masterpieces by French and German artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries such as Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Pablo Picasso or Max Liebermann. His great-niece Dagmar Westberg has continued the tradition. She supports not only the Städel Museum but also, with great personal commitment, numerous other social, cultural and educational endeavours. Among the institutions and foundations she has aided are the Frankfurt girls’ refuge FeM, the Cronstetten-Stiftung, the German Summer Work Program at Princeton University and the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main. In 2008 she was awarded the Georg August Zinn Medal of the State of Hesse for her dedication.

Jusepe de Ribera (Játiva 1591 – 1652 Neapel)
Saint James the Greater, ca. 1615/16

Dates and facts
The painting acquired by the Städel Museum shows the apostle James the Greater in the impressive format of 133.1 by 99.1 centimetres, corresponding to the dimensions which, in Roman painting, were characteristic of the so-called tela d’imperatore (“imperial canvas”). In the work, the viewer encounters a monumental half-length figure of sheer sculptural presence. The apostle stands before a dark wall and is illuminated by a beam of light strikingly set off against that dark surface – a lighting situation of the kind typical of Caravaggio and his successors. In his right hand he firmly grips his attribute, the long pilgrim’s staff; in his left hand, which he holds before his body, he clutches a book. A further indication of his identity as a pilgrim is the insignia of the two small crossed pilgrim’s staffs pinned to the chest of his robe and gleaming in the light. James’s hands – toughened by weather and work and quite literally demonstrating his “hands-on” character – have been rendered with the almost provocative naturalism Caravaggio had introduced to art not long before. His garments, a light grey tunic with a vivid red cloak over it, is rich – not in decoration but in volume. The saint has the cloak draped over his left shoulder and gathered on his left arm in such a way that the thick fabric creates an elaborately formed topography of folds. Light and shade lend forceful plasticity to the virtually abstract pattern thus formed. The body performs a slight but perceptible twist; the left shoulder is turned towards the viewer. The contrary directions of the arms and hands lend the figure a certain dynamic. The monumentality of the pose, the arm held before the body in a protective gesture, and the three-dimensional pattern of the folds presenting itself so prominently to the viewer all serve to intensify the presence of the apostle in his virtually stage-like appearance in this painting.

The manner in which this inherent force is tempered by the figure itself is typical of Ribera’s style. It is his head, inclined gently to one side, that brings an entirely different facet of the saint into play. Ribera calls attention to the head by making it the only part of the figure placed directly in the beam of light, while also backing it with a light aureole. The apostle gazes at the viewer frontally from deeply dark shining eyes, his lips slightly parted. Everything about his countenance is fine, noble and elegant – the curve of the lips, the contours of the ears, the dynamic strands of wavy brown hair. The gentleness of the face contrasts subtly with the forceful expression of the body. The ambiguity between appearance and apparition, presence and rapture distinguishes the painting as a sensitively conceived masterwork by the early Ribera. He executed it in the years around 1615/16, towards the end of his stay in Rome and shortly before he departed for Naples, where he would reside for the rest of his life.

Art-historical classification
Art scholars initially attributed the painting to the so-called “Master of the Judgement of Solomon” who has meanwhile revealed himself to be a fiction of research. Since 1978 the work has been cited in art-historical literature convincingly and unanimously as an early work by Ribera, and included in all of the relevant œuvre catalogues. Not only is the quality of the conception and painterly execution of this painting superb, but also the condition in which it has come down to us. It is above all stylistic comparison with works known for certain to be from Ribera’s hand that testify to his authorship, for example the Saints Peter and Paul in Strasbourg, the Saint Sebastian in Osuna, and the Penitent Saint Peter in New York, all of which resemble the Apostle James extremely closely in the formation of the face and modelling of the folds, even down to the smallest detail. A depiction of the same saint in the Prado, executed around 1630, strikingly shows how, fifteen years later, in a different stylistic phase, Ribera drew on his early work. Yet the painting is highly important not only within the Spanish master’s œuvre, but also with regard to its reception by his contemporaries. Even Diego Velázquez, an artist eight years Ribera’s junior, presumably received fundamental impulses from the older master’s work for his Saint Thomas executed only a few years later and now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Orléans.

Provenance
In Rome, the sources tell us, the young painter led the life of a bohemian and quickly made a name for himself with his art. As a result, his paintings were verifiably in the inventories of some of the town’s wealthiest collectors. Vincenzo Giustiniani, for instance, known as a patron of Caravaggio, must have cultivated close contact with Ribera and admired him much as he did Caravaggio, whose works are the most numerously represented in his inventory. That listing also mentions a Saint James the Great by Ribera’s hand in the tela d’imperatore format – possibly the very work now in the Frankfurt collection. The twentieth-century collection history of the Städel Saint James was recorded thanks to a number of changes of ownership. It first appeared in a catalogue when it was offered at auction by Leo Schidlof in Vienna in 1924. In 1927 it was shown in Berlin in the framework of an exhibition of the Antiquitätenhaus Wertheim; the accompanying catalogue names a certain Ernst Lang as its owner. Two years later, the private collector Ernst Seifert purchased the painting from Ernst Adler, domiciled in Asch, at an auction in the Berlin establishment of Rudolph Lepke. Seifert kept it over the war years, for nearly three decades altogether, and in 1958 sold it to the Munich art dealer Julius Harry Böhler. The latter sold it in 1964 to a family from whose collection the Bernheimer-Colnaghi art dealership recently obtained possession of it. It was there that the Frankfurt patron Dagmar Westberg purchased it in 2014 so as to present it to the Städel Museum as a gift on 8 December on the occasion of her one-hundredth birthday.

The significance of the acquisition for the Städel collection
At the Städel, the donation fills a gap in the Old Masters holdings. Precisely the beginnings of European Baroque painting, dating back to the decades around 1600 in Italy, were inadequately represented in this public collection. The donation of a Madonna by Guercino (ca. 1621/22) from the Beaucamp collection in 2010 was a first important step in remedying this state of affairs. A wide range of links can also be drawn to Guido Reni’s Caravaggesque Christ at the Column (1604), Dirck van Baburen’s Young Man Singing (1622) and Massimo Stanzione’s Susanna and the Elders (ca 1630/35).

“In Ribera’s Saint James, an outstanding example of the early reception of Caravaggio has made its way into the collection, where it will introduce a striking accent in our large Italian hall. A painting that stops you in your tracks”, comments Bastian Eclercy, head of the collection of pre-1800 Italian, French and Spanish painting at the Städel Museum.

The major museums of the world – first and foremost the Prado in Madrid and the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples – have works by Ribera in their collections. At the Frankfurt Städel, the absence of a painting by this master has hitherto represented a painful gap. A particular desideratum was a work from the phase in which the young artist was strongly affected by his encounter with the art of Caravaggio. Still in his early twenties, Ribera lived in Rome for at least four years from about 1612 to 1616, and there fell under the spell of that master of chiaroscuro painting and the study of nature. Very few sources shed light on this phase of Ribera’s career, which has only recently gained the recognition it deserves from scholars and the public thanks above all to the major exhibition in Madrid and Naples in 2011/12. That show gave research on the subject a regular boost, as a result of which Ribera’s early work is presently one of the most intensively discussed topics in the literature on the Italian Baroque. Within this context, the acquisition of a large-scale Ribera canvas of the Penitent Saint Peter (ca. 1612/13) by the Metropolitan Museum in New York in 2012 attracted a lot of attention, as did the Paris Louvre’s purchase of the artist’s Saint John the Baptist the same year. With the new acquisition that has come about through Dagmar Westberg’s gift, the Städel is now in the fortunate position of being able to make a significant contribution to this highly topical discussion.

Jusepe de Ribera (Játiva 1591 – 1652 Naples)
Saint James the Greater, ca. 1615/16
Oil on canvas, 133.1 x 99.1 cm
Frankfurt am Main, Städel Museum
Donated by Dagmar Westberg, Frankfurt am Main, in 2014

Städel Museum
Information: www.staedelmuseum.de, info@staedelmuseum.de,
Telephone +49(0)69-605098-0, Fax +49(0)69-605098-111
Visitor services: +49(0)69-605098-232, besucherdienst@staedelmuseum.de
Location: Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt am Main
Opening hours: Tue, Wed, Sat and Sun 10 am – 6 pm, Thu and Fri 10 am – 9 pm
Special opening hours: 24 Dec 2014 closed, 25 Dec and 26 Dec 2014 10 am – 6 pm,
31 Dec 2014 closed, 1 Jan 2015 11 am – 6 pm

THE STÄDEL CELEBRATES ITS BICENTENNIAL WITH A SPECIAL EXHIBITION PROGRAM

MONET AND THE BIRTH OF IMPRESSIONISM – FIGURATIVE PAINTING OF THE EIGHTIES IN GERMANY – MASTERWORKS IN DIALOGUE. EMINENT GUESTS FOR THE ANNIVERSARY – AND MUCH MORE

In writing down his last will and testament, Johann Friedrich Städel laid the cornerstone for Germany’s oldest civic museum foundation in 1815. 2015 will see the bicentennial of this historic day on March 15. The Städel will celebrate its anniversary with a variety of high-carat exhibition and research projects, numerous substantial acquisitions and additions to its collections, a major public celebration, as well as a considerable extension of its educational offer, particularly in the digital sphere.

JEAN-JACQUES DE BOISSIEU. A Contemporary of Städel’s
February 11 – May 10, 2015
Exhibition Hall of the Department of Prints and Drawings
Jean-Jacques de Boissieu (1736–1810) was already a highly acclaimed artist beyond France in his lifetime. Not only princes but also private collectors like Johann Friedrich Städel were fascinated with the landscapes, genre scenes, and portraits depicted in the artist’s drawings and prints. The founder of the Städelsches Kunstinstitut acquired over twenty drawings and far more than two hundred etchings by de Boissieu, which still rank among the central holdings of the Städel’s Department of Prints and Drawings. Created in a period of historically revolutionary events, de Boissieu’s oeuvre mirrors the landscape and life of the province around the artist’s native city of Lyon with an almost irritatingly unexcited and serious steadiness. His etched landscapes and portraits as well as his subtly nuanced brush and chalk drawings reveal a progressive realism that hints at a bourgeois understanding of art independent of any academic norms.
Curator: Dr. Jutta Schütt

MONET AND THE BIRTH OF IMPRESSIONISM
March 11 – June 28, 2015
Exhibition annex
With Claude Monet’s painting The Luncheon (Le déjeuner) from 1868/69, the Städel Museum possesses one of the key works of early Impressionism. Starting from this work – and the institution’s outstanding holdings of early Impressionist works by Auguste Renoir, Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley, and Paul Cézanne – the show on display at the Städel will highlight the beginnings of the Impressionist movement from spring 2015 on. The comprehensive anniversary exhibition, with which the Städel celebrates its bicentennial, draws on the history of the institution’s own collection: it was already in the first years of the twentieth century when Georg Swarzenski, then Director of the museum, passionately championed French art, which today constitutes an important focal point of the Städel’s collection. The special exhibition sheds light on how a contemporary experience of looking at things becomes manifest in the Impressionist artists’ paintings and how the representation of this “modern gaze” in their pictures changed in the course of time. Based on a selection of more than ninety paintings including numerous world-renowned loans from museums abroad – such as Claude Monet’s La Grenouillère (1869) from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, L’Étang à Montgeron (The Pond at Montgeron) (1877) from the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, or the monumental Luncheon (1874) from the collection of the Musée d’Orsay in Paris – the individual lines of development within Impressionism and the change in the relationship between content and form can be illustrated. The presentation of Impressionist painting is rounded off by photographs and cartoons dealing with the art movement.
Curator: Dr. Felix Krämer
Sponsored by: Commerzbank-Stiftung

Vices of Life: The Prints of William Hogarth
June 10 – September 6, 2015
Exhibition Hall of the Department of Prints and Drawings
Presenting works by the English painter, copperplate engraver, and etcher William Hogarth (1697–1764), the Städel Museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings focuses on artworks from the days of its founder Johann Friedrich Städel. It was Hogarth who established the new genre of the “modern moral subject” with his series A Harlot’s Progress (1732), A Rake’s Progress (1735), and Marriage à-la-mode (1745). An attentive observer, the artist made the vices and seamy sides of modern life in the metropolis of London his subject. Hogarth regarded his works as a printed theater of his day and laid the foundations for sociocritical caricature in England. The Städel’s Department of Prints and Drawings comprises a significant array of works by Hogarth, including all the series in their entirety that gained the artist his international renown. The special quality of these works, which came to inform a whole era, lies in Hogarth’s great interest in individual physiognomies, his keen powers of observation, and his mordant wit.
Curator: Annett Gerlach

THE 80S.
FIGURATIVE PAINTING IN WEST-GERMANY
July 22 – October 18, 2015 Exhibition annex From 22 July to 18 October 2015, the Städel Museum will be presenting “The 80s. Figurative Painting in West Germany” in a major special exhibition. With some one hundred works by altogether twenty-seven artists, the show will illuminate the novel, disconcerting and enormously dynamic approach to figurative painting that developed in the 1980s almost simultaneously in Berlin, Hamburg and the Rhineland. Works by Ina Barfuss, Werner Büttner, Walter Dahn, Jiří Georg Dokoupil, Rainer Fetting, Georg Herold, Martin Kippenberger, Helmut Middendorf, Christa Näher, Albert Oehlen, Salomé, Andreas Schulze and many others will be on view. The exhibition will shed light on the West German art centres – for example Moritzplatz in Berlin or Mülheimer Freiheit in Cologne – while at the same time providing insights into the figurative painting of those years in all its complexity and diversity. The artists who turned the art world topsy-turvy with unbridled intensity and a fast painterly tempo in the years around 1980 produced figurative paintings that ventured a critical examination of the tradition of painting, the post-war avant-gardes and their own immediate present. They drew their themes primarily from their surroundings. As a result, the established art scene became as much a subject of their works as homosexual emancipation and the intoxicating pace of the international club and music world conveyed by New Wave and Punk from the mid seventies onward. The protagonists of the time were nevertheless anything but a homogeneous painterly movement. On the contrary, the painting of a decade demarcated by student revolts on one end and a reunified Germany on the other is distinguished by a multi-faceted and often contradictory coexistence of various currents, influences and sensitivities. With its specific focus on post-1945 painting, the Städel Museum’s collection of contemporary art offers an ideal framework for the presentation of this eventful decade.
List of artists: Hans Peter Adamski, Peter Angermann, Elvira Bach, Ina Barfuss, Peter Bömmels, Werner Büttner, Luciano Castelli, Walter Dahn, Jiří Georg Dokoupil, Rainer Fetting, G. L. Gabriel, Georg Herold, Gerard Kever, Jan Knap, Milan Kunc, Martin Kippenberger, Helmut Middendorf, Christa Näher, Gerhard Naschberger, Albert Oehlen, Markus Oehlen, Salomé, Andreas Schulze, Bettina Semmer, Volker Tannert, Thomas Wachweger and Bernd Zimmer.
Curators: Dr. Martin Engler, Franziska Leuthäußer
Sponsored by: Deutsche Bank AG

MASTERWORKS IN DIALOGUE. EMINENT GUESTS FOR THE ANNIVERSARY
October 7, 2015 – January 24, 2016
Presentations of the Old Masters, Modern Art and Contemporary Art,
Exhibition Hall of the Department of Prints and Drawings
The Städel collection looks forward to welcoming a number of international visitors on the occasion of its bicentennial. A show that has been conceived by all the Städel’s curators together will confront key works of the institution’s own holdings with masterpieces from the most renowned museums over the world. The fascinating and inspiring comparisons will – both in terms of contents and space – encompass all collections of the Städel Museum: visitors will come upon temporary “partnerships” in about eighty selected places throughout the house to be explored for three and a half months. Jan van Eyck’s Annunciation (c. 1434/36) will fly in from Washington, for example, and meet with the master’s Lucca Madonna (1437) that resides in the Städel. The two paintings, which rank among the most beautiful and, as regards their contents, most complex Madonnas of the most famous Early Netherlandish artist, were part of the splendid old masters collection of William II, King of the Netherlands, until 1850. The confrontation of Edgar Degas’s Musicians in the Orchestra (1872–1876) with his Ballet Scene from Meyerbeer’s Opera “Robert Le Diable” (1876) reveals a common ground in terms of both contents and motifs, in particular in regards to the depicted relationship between orchestra and dancers. Bringing together loans such as Geschlecht mit Klößen (Sex with Dumplings, 1963) with paintings from the collection of the Städel Museum like Acker (Field, 1962) elucidates the painter Georg Baselitz’s early work as a crucial position in the history of German twentieth-century painting. The Department of Prints and Drawings will also be visited by works of Elsheimer, Goltzius, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and others. The approximately eighty encounters of important anniversary guests with works from the Städel’s collection will not only yield insights into exciting and sometimes surprising art-historical and historical connections but also unfold a background for reassessing the Städel’s own holdings.
Curators: Dr. Bastian Eclercy, Dr. Martin Engler, Dr. Felix Krämer, Dr. Eva Mongi-Vollmer, Prof. Dr. Jochen Sander, Dr. Jutta Schütt, Dr. Martin Sonnabend
Sponsored by: DZ Bank

JOHN BALDESSARI
November 5, 2015 – January 24, 2016
Exhibition annex
On the occasion of the Städel Museum’s bicentennial, the American artist John Baldessari (b. in National City, California, in 1931) has, based on holdings from the Städel’s collection, created a new series of works, which will be presented there in winter 2015/16. Masterpieces by Lucas Cranach the Elder, Agnolo Bronzino, Dirck van Baburen, or Maria Lassnig provided the artist with the visual material for his large-format collages. Baldessari has ranked among the most influential figures of the international art scene since the late 1960s. An outstanding representative of Conceptual Art and Media Art, he developed an original and unmistakable understanding of the pictorial between painting and photography, text and image. In his work, he uses and explores pictorial strategies of Modernism, such as montage or the incorporation of everyday elements, and confronts these with approaches of the postwar avant-gardes like their discourses on consumerism and the media. Following in the tradition of his exploration of the complex relationship between painting and photography, Baldessari’s new group of works reflects on a number of quite different exhibits from the Städel’s collection, setting them off against text and monochromy, photography and concept. The result is an against- and with-each-other that questions old and more recent works alike, shedding new light on them.
Curator: Dr. Martin Engler

Titles and exhibition dates subject to change

The bicentennial program and anniversary activities will be presented in detail in the context of the Städel Museum’s annual press conference scheduled for January 21, 2015 at 11 a.m. Please register for this conference in the Metzler Hall by contacting presse@staedelmuseum.de.

In the exhibition “Realms of Imagination. Albrecht Altdorfer and the Expressivity of Art around 1500”, taking place from 5 November 2014 to 8 February 2015, the Städel Museum is shedding light on far-reaching innovations that came about in the early sixteenth century in the art of Europe, which took on a surprisingly modern appearance as a result. With the aid of 120 objects, the show vividly conveys how, around 1500, an entire generation of artists formulated the genres of landscape and history painting as well as the portrait anew. Far removed from naturalistic representation, an innovative, expressive interplay of light effects, exuberant colouration and grotesque forms and poses evolved throughout the spectrum of artistic media: painting, sculpture, printmaking, drawing and book illumination. Taking the artists Albrecht Altdorfer (ca. 1480–1538), Wolf Huber (ca. 1485–1553), the Master IP of Passau (active until after 1520) and Hans Leinberger (documented in Landshut, 1510–1530) as a point of departure, the phenomenon of “expressivity” – a chief pursuit of the artists of the so-called Danube School – will here be placed in a pan-European context for the first time. To this end, the works by Altdorfer, Huber, Leinberger and the Master IP are juxtaposed with examples by contemporaries such as Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553), Hans Leu (ca. 1490–1531) or Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528). The exhibition emphasizes the importance of examining their œuvres within a broader European reference framework, because not only the artists in the Danube valley but also their colleagues in the Netherlands, on the Lower and Upper Rhine, in Switzerland and Upper Italy, Bohemia, Poland and Northern Germany availed themselves of a directly comparable pictorial and formal language. The Frankfurt show demonstrates this phenomenon to its visitors in a range of media and themes whose breadth is unprecedented in the history of exhibitions on this subject.

The exhibition is being supported by the Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain and the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe. It is receiving additional support from the Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne.

“Realms of Imagination” is the outcome of a joint exhibition project of the Städel Museum and the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung in Frankfurt am Main and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna in cooperation with the Geisteswissenschaftliches Zentrum Geschichte und Kultur Ostmitteleuropas e.V. of the Universität Leipzig.

After its presentation at the Städel, the show will be on view at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna from 17 March to 14 June 2015.

It has been nearly fifty years since the last comprehensive presentation of the art of the “Danube School”, and thirty years since the last major thematic show on Altdorfer. Now, with a selection of striking masterworks, the special exhibition at the Städel Museum is illuminating the phenomenon of expressivity in the art around 1500 in all its thematic and artistic facets and media in a panoramic survey of this stylistic development, which was not confined solely to the Danube region. Particularly in the area of religious depictions, the approaching Reformation granted artists of the time entirely new expressive liberties. They would not enjoy this freedom for long, however, because once the process of confessionalization was over the Protestant faith renounced certain images entirely, while the Catholic Church returned to a policy of insisting on iconographic conventions. As a result, in the art around 1500 we encounter narrative strains that were no longer conceivable in the same form in the further course of the sixteenth century.

The exhibition assembles and deliberately juxtaposes all of the artistic genres prevalent and displaying expressive tendencies in the period around 1500. Within this context, paintings and prints from the Städel collection as well as sculptures from the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung form the show’s core, which is enhanced with prominent loans from other museums. Key works from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the Alte Pinakothek and the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in Munich, the Národni Galerie in Prague, the Skulpturensammlung and Gemäldegalerie of the Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin, the Graphische Sammlung of the Universitätsbibliothek Erlangen, the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, the Szépművészeti Múzeum in Budapest and other collections will be on view. We moreover succeeded in obtaining a substantial number of loans belonging to churches, for example the Retable of St John from the Church of Our Lady before Týn in Prague (1520s) and paintings from St Florian’s Priory in Linz. With this presentation, the Städel is continuing its series of major exhibitions on art of the Early Modern era, of which the most recent example was the show on Albrecht Dürer.

The exhibition is divided thematically into six parts. The introductory section, entitled Weight of the World, Forces of Nature: Depictions of St Christopher, is devoted to one of the most frequently portrayed saints in the Late Middle Ages. Images of St Christopher, who carries the Christ Child across a river on his shoulders, not only decorated church walls and altarpieces in the form of paintings or sculptures, but were also very popular as prints used in domestic settings. Albrecht Altdorfer, Wolf Huber and Georg Lemberger depicted the saint in a previously unheard-of manner, employing bizarrely exaggerated forms to lend expression to the tremendous burden Christopher took upon himself when he carried the Child.

In the first gallery of the exhibition annex, the four leading artists of the Danube region are introduced with a selection of key works: Albrecht Altdorfer, Wolf Huber and the sculptors Meister IP and Hans Leinberger. Here the focus is on Images of Man. On the one hand, the objects on display shed light on how these masters differed from the preceding generation of artists in the depiction of the human being; on the other hand attention is called to stylistic devices they employed in the realization of this pictorial motif. Albrecht Dürer, as the protagonist and originator of a mathematically and scientifically constructed image of the human being, is moreover juxtaposed here with his contemporaries Altdorfer, Huber, Master IP and Leinberger. In contrast to Dürer’s precisely proportioned bodies, the figures in the works of the other artists are extremely dynamic, and their anatomy is often depicted in a manner that is anything but realistic. The art of the Danube masters is distinguished by the employment of expressive colour and form. With works by Wolf Huber such as his painting The Arrest of Christ (after 1522) or his Altarpiece of St Anne (1521), the second leading artist of the Danube region after Altdorfer is presented. What is more, in addition to Hans Leinberger, the monogrammist IP is featured here – with the central panel of his Retable of St John (1520s) – as one of the most prominent representatives of sixteenth-century sculpture.

In the section Oblique Views in Crucifixions and Other Passion Scenes, the expressivity of the art of this epoch is examined with the aid of various religious motifs. Within the œuvres of Altdorfer, Huber, the Master IP and Leinberger, expressive means such as ornamentalization, dramatization and distortion are encountered in particularly striking form in depictions of the Crucifixion and the Deposition. A Crucifixion scene known as the so-called Schottenkreuzigung (ca. 1500) serves to introduce a further artist active in the Danube region in the early sixteenth century: Lucas Cranach the Elder; it is his first painting. The depiction of the theme by Cranach contrasts with other interpretations of the motif particularly by virtue of its drastic character. The positioning of the crosses at oblique angles would later be adopted frequently by other artists. Leinberger unites all these various phenomena in his low reliefs of the Crucifixion, the Deposition and the Lamentation of Christ (ca. 1515/16). The Master IP is represented in this section with a Crucifixion group in the round, part of the Retable of St John from the Church of Our Lady before Týn (1520s). Huber, in his Large landscape with a city (ca. 1525) relegates the actual pictorial theme of the Crucifixion to the background, giving the landscape centre stage instead.

The section with the heading Landscape as a Vehicle of Expression features striking examples of how, in art around 1500, landscape and its components no longer serve as mere backdrops for the actual event, but – for the first time – become a pictorial subject and a theme in their own right. Skies threatening to erupt in storm or lyrical sunsets underscore the expressivity and moods of scenes usually devoid of people, and in many artworks the vegetation develops a mysterious life of its own. Pen-and-ink drawings by Albrecht Altdorfer and his younger brother Erhard, for example, show willows and spruces not as static trees but as eerily animated beings.

The following section, Means of Expressivity, is devoted to examining the various expressive devices employed in the art of the period in question. With the aid of deliberate contortion, deformation, ornamentalization and dramatization, as well as with draughtsmanship, the treatment of light, colouration and pathos, the artists undermined traditional visual expectations and presented the depicted figures in a new, astonishing, and often downright modern manner. In his painting The Birth of Christ (ca. 1511), for example, Altdorfer achieves an extreme intensification of the scene’s impact with his use of colour and his handling of the light. The figure of an Abbot Saint (ca. 1520/30) by a Lower Bavarian artist is distinguished by tremendous distortion and deformation. The new generation of artists conceived of the human body virtually as a malleable material which could be modelled at will, regardless of established ideals.

The exhibition comes to a close with the topic Artists and Their Clients. Here we take a look at the role played in the development of the new style by the persons who commissioned the artworks. The Prayer Book of Emperor Maximilian I (1514/15) from the Bibliothèque Municipale in Besançon once again shifts the focus to the importance of Dürer and his function as an authority to be resisted, but also as a source of inspiration and point of departure for the exponents of the new approach. Recent findings in connection with the financers and clients of large sculptural ensembles of the altarpieces and epitaphs executed above all for Bohemian churches moreover shed light on the special production conditions and mechanisms of what in many cases were monumental commissions.

The themes explored and the insights gained within the framework of the show offer a fresh and comprehensive look at the unique phenomenon of expressivity in art around 1500.

REALMS OF IMAGINATION.
ALBRECHT ALTDORFER AND THE EXPRESSIVITY OF ART AROUND 1500

Curators: Dr Stefan Roller (Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung), Prof Dr Jochen Sander (Städel Museum)
Exhibition dates: 5 November 2014 to 8 February 2015
Press preview: Tuesday, 4 November 2014, 11 am

Information: www.staedelmuseum.de, info@staedelmuseum.de, Telephone +49(0)69-605098-0, Fax +49(0)69-605098-111
Visitor service: +49(0)69-605098-232, besucherdienst@staedelmuseum.de
Location: Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt am Main
Opening hours: Tue, Wed, Sat and Sun 10 am – 6 pm, Thu and Fri 10 am – 9 pm
Special opening hours: 24 Dec 2014 closed, 25 Dec and 26 Dec 2014 10 am – 6 pm, 31 Dec 2014 closed, 1 Jan 2015 11 am – 6 pm
Admission: 12 euros, reduced 10 euros, family ticket 20 euros; Saturdays, Sundays and holidays 14 euros, reduced 12 euros, family ticket 24 euros, admission free for children to the age of 12;
groups (min. 10 persons) reduced admission fee per person Groups are required to make advance reservations.
Advance ticket sales at: tickets.staedelmuseum.de

Catalogue: An extensive catalogue edited by Stefan Roller and Jochen Sander will accompany the exhibition. With a foreword by Max Hollein and essays by Daniela Bohde, Katrin Dyballa, Markus Hörsch, Susanne Jaeger, Guido Messling, Jochen Sander and Matthias Weniger. German edition, approx. 290 pages, Hirmer Verlag, 34.90 euros (museum edition)
Visitors’ guide: A 36-page guide to the exhibition (for visitors age 12 and over) will be available, 7.50 euros, in sets for school classes 1 euro per guide.
Social Media: The Städel Museum will communicate the show in the social media with the hash tags #FantastischeWelten and #staedel.
General guided tours of the exhibition: Thursdays 7 pm /Saturdays 11 am / Sundays 3 pm
The number of participants is limited. Tickets: 4 euros plus admission fee, available starting two hours before the tour begins, on Saturdays from 10 am, at the Städel cashier’s desk
Special guided tours on request, please call: +49(0)69-605098-200 or write to info@staedelmuseum.de

With support from: Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain, Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe
With additional support from: Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne
Media partners: Verkehrsgesellschaft Frankfurt am Main, Weltkunst