2015

From 11 March to 28 June 2015, Frankfurt’s Städel Museum is presenting a major exhibition on “Monet and the Birth of Impressionism”. One hundred masterworks from the world’s most prominent painting collections will shed light on the beginnings of the Impressionist movement in the years from the early 1860s to 1880. World-famous loans will be on view, for example Monet’s La Grenouillère (1869) from the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, his Boulevard des Capucines (1873) from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, and The Luncheon: decorative panel (ca. 1873) and Camille on Her Deathbed (1879), both from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. The exhibition, which will be one of the highlights of the ¨200 Years Städel¨ anniversary programme, inquires into how Impressionism came about and the extent to which this approach to painting manifests contemporary visual experience. In addition to some fifty paintings by Claude Monet, works by numerous other Impressionists will also be on display, including important examples by Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley. The anniversary exhibition bears a direct connection to the history of the Städel Museum’s own holdings: as early as the beginning of the twentieth century, then director Georg Swarzenski (1876–1957) came out passionately in favour of acquiring French painting ‒ which now represents one of the chief focuses of the museum’s collection.

The exhibition is been made possible by the Commerzbank Foundation.

In conjunction with the show, a catalogue is being published by Prestel Verlag in German and English. In addition to numerous essays, it will present the results of in-depth technological examinations of all the Impressionist works in the Städel holdings, carried out in preparation for the exhibition. An audio guide of the show recorded by actress Diane Kruger will also be available. The free Digitorial moreover offers interested visitors a means of acquainting themselves with the exhibition contents before coming to the museum (monet.staedelmuseum.de). In order to avoid waiting in queues, the Städel advises visitors to purchase their tickets in advance online at tickets.staedelmuseum.de.

“Works from the early days of Impressionism are rare and precious. All the more delighted are we that we have been able to realize such a complex and spectacular special exhibition as a prelude to our anniversary year, and have the opportunity to present loans from all over the world side by side with central works from the Städel collection. The exhibition and research project will undoubtedly be yet another highlight in the Städel’s two-hundred-year history”, comments Max Hollein, the director of the Städel Museum.

Taking as its point of departure Claude Monet’s painting The Luncheon (1868/69) ‒ a key work of early Impressionism that the Städel is fortunate enough to have in its holdings ‒ and the museum’s superb collection of early Impressionist works by Auguste Renoir, Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley and Paul Cézanne, the exhibition will show how the Impressionists found their way to the dissolution and dematerialization of their pictorial motifs. From a multifaceted perspective, the visitors will learn about the various conditions that led to the birth of Impressionism and the radical change that came about in the relationship between pictorial content and form in the paintings produced by this important movement. Impressionism challenged the visual habits of the time in a completely new way ‒ and met with a wide variety of responses, as is evidenced by contemporary caricatures to be presented alongside works of Impressionist painting and photography.

“Our show revolves around the beginnings of the Impressionist movement. The Städel collection provides a foundation upon which we can ask how it was possible for Impressionism to emerge within just a few years. This exhibition focuses on the development of Impressionism from its inception to 1880”, remarks curator Felix Krämer, the head of the collection of modern art at the Städel Museum.

The nineteenth century was a time of upheavals and a wide variety of developments all taking place at the same time ‒ developments that also left their mark on the paintings of the Impressionists. Increasing industrialization brought about a change in the relationship between man and nature, but also that between work and leisure time. Technical progress led to a general acceleration of life. The visual experience of the big city and the spread of new media such as photography also had a decisive impact on the works of the period’s artists. The main protagonist and continual point of reference in the exhibition is Claude Monet. Among the artists of his time, Monet played a pioneering role in the growing popularity of open-air painting. In his œuvre, the formal innovations of Impressionism ‒ the clearly recognizable brushstroke and the rapid, sketchy painting style ‒ are particularly prominent. And his work also exemplifies another phenomenon that applies to the art of the Impressionists in general: they increasingly abandoned large-scale figural compositions in favour of smaller landscape scenes.

A circular tour of the exhibition

Part I of the exhibition
Arranged in chronological order, the presentation spreads out on both floors of the exhibition annex. A prologue in the first room on the ground floor is dedicated to the artists whom the Impressionists looked to as examples, such as the representatives of the “School of Barbizon” in whose work the predilection for landscape scenes, the tendency towards a sketchy manner of painting and the departure from academic tradition are all manifest. Here key compositions by Camille Corot, Jean-François Millet, Gustave Courbet, Charles-François Daubigny, Eugène Boudin and Johan Barthold Jongkind are on view.
After the prologue, the first main section of the show retraces the development of early Impressionist art in the period from 1864 to approximately 1870/71. It begins with a selection of paintings executed in the Forest of Fontainebleau. This is where the members of the “Barbizon School” worked on their open-air studies. Following in the footsteps of the painters they admired, Monet and his artist friends Frédéric Bazille, Pissarro, Renoir and Sisley also visited the Fontainebleau woods to paint. This section of the show is flanked by a photo gallery devoted to the theme of nature in the photography of the period, and shedding light on the concurrence of painting and photography activities in the Forest of Fontainebleau.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, Paris transformed from a city still shaped by medieval structures to a modern metropolis characterized by large squares and wide boulevards and considered very progressive. Monet also devoted himself to the motif of the public urban space in these years. His first endeavours to come to terms with the theme of the city are already perceivable in the following room of the show. Here the significance of Édouard Manet for Monet also becomes evident. At the time, Manet was regarded as the major talent of the avant-garde, and younger artists looked to him for orientation. The exhibition features Manet’s large-scale painting The Universal Exhibition of Paris 1867 (Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo). Yet Monet was also concerned with depicting the urban realm: The Quai du Louvre of 1867 (Gemeentemuseum, The Hague) shows the view from the balcony of the famous museum: it was not the Old Masters in the Louvre galleries that interested him, but the view of the everyday present outside. At the same time, he and his colleagues continued to paint landscapes and seascapes, several of which are likewise on view in this room. The rear section of the ground floor concentrates on the years from 1868 to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71. The key work here is the painting The Luncheon (1868/69) belonging to the Städel. The depiction of the home of a couple without a marriage licence and with an illegitimate child was a deliberate provocation and a critique on prevailing conventions. It was moreover the first time an artist had represented a private interior on such a large scale. Measuring 2.31 x 1.51 metres, the work was refused by the Salon jury, as was the depiction of La Grenouillère (1869) Monet had likewise submitted. This rejection led to the artist’s break with the Paris Salon and a radical reorientation in his art: The Luncheon is the last of his large-scale figural paintings and marks his departure from Manet as an artistic reference. The fact that Monet presented this painting at the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, when it was already five years old, testifies to the significance it nevertheless held for him. It was the largest work in the 1874 show. Scenes of the Franco-Prussian War are not to be found in the Impressionist paintings of this period. Most of the works were executed in exile, among them Monet’s Dutch landscape views. This section is enhanced by a photo gallery shedding light on the discrepancy between the political situation and the cheerful Impressionist pictorial motifs of these years.

Part II of the exhibition
The second part of the exhibition follows the further development of Monet’s œuvre and those of other Impressionists from 1872 to 1880 ‒ i.e. to the phase in which the subordination of the pictorial subject to atmospheric phenomena reached a climax. Upon entering the suite of galleries on the upper level, the beholder encounters another Monet painting: The Luncheon: Decorative Panel dating from 1873 (Musée d'Orsay, Paris), with which the artist reacted to his Frankfurt Luncheon. The work aptly demonstrates the shift of interest that had come about in his art: the focus was no longer on the human being and the interior but on nature and atmosphere. The dark shades of the predecessor painting make way for flickering dabs of paint applied to the canvas unmixed. Monet now concentrated primarily on reproducing light and colour and conveying a certain mood. In these paintings the visitor witnesses the increasing dissolution of form that took place in this phase of Impressionism. Monet presented this work along with the depiction of La Grenouillère at the second Impressionist exhibition in 1876.
The painting The Boulevard des Capucines of 1873 (Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City) on display in this room is representative of Monet’s depictions of Paris. The pedestrians on the street have been recorded sketchily, with rapid brushstrokes, as an anonymous mass. Here the artist has masterfully captured the constant state of unrest and motion in the city with painterly means, and it is a work that already met with great admiration in his lifetime. The subsequent section of the show features landscape depictions and leisure-time scenes of the years 1873 to 1878, works that address man’s changing relationship to nature. As illustrated, for example, by Monet’s painting Summer of 1874 (Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin), the great outdoors gained importance in this period as a place of recreation and recuperation for the modern city dweller. In the main room on this floor, the focus is on the Parisian metropolis and motifs of urban life as depicted in paintings by Degas, Morisot, Renoir and others. In Monet’s railway station scenes the increasing dissolution of the scenery brought about by the sketchy, diffuse application of the paint is clearly evident. At the centre of his 1877 work Exterior of Saint-Lazare Station (The Signal) of 1877 (Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum Hannover), a large traffic signal blocks the view. The grounds of the railway behind it are blurred, and reminiscent of a landscape seen from a train window during fast travel on what was then a brand new means of transport. The steam of the engine also prevents us from taking in the entire scene. Obstructions to sight have thus been elevated to the status of pictorial motifs as the actual subject recedes ever further into the background. At the same time, the artist has assigned special importance to atmospheric qualities. This section is accompanied by a gallery showcasing contemporary caricatures on Impressionism. In the last room on the upper level, we see how the phenomenon of the pictorial subject’s disintegration has been taken to the farthest extreme and the intrinsic value of colour has come to the fore, for example in Monet’s painting Vétheuil in the Fog of 1879 (Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris).

Finally, an “epilogue” assembles a number of characteristic works of Monet’s late phase that serve as particularly good illustrations of the development to the nearly complete loss of the pictorial subject. In the four paintings from the Rouen Cathedral series (Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel; Museum Folkwang, Essen; Klassik Stiftung Weimar; private collection) executed in 1892‒94 and depictions of London bridges likewise dating from this period (Philadelphia Museum of Art, Indianapolis Museum of Art, private collection), no more than an inkling of the built structures has remained; they appear almost entirely immaterial. Instead, the representation of light and atmosphere dominates the compositions.

The research project in preparation for the exhibition
In preparation for the exhibition, the Städel’s department of painting conservation subjected all of the Impressionist works in the museum’s holdings to comprehensive technological investigations. Achieved with the aid of the microscope, ultraviolet and infrared light and X-ray, the results of these procedures enhance the project with a well-founded technological perspective and are being published in the accompanying exhibition catalogue. With the aid of QR codes, visitors can moreover access detailed online information on the results of technological examinations of seven selected paintings in the exhibition. Among other things, the examinations have provided invaluable insights into the complex evolution of Monet’s Luncheon. Edited by Felix Krämer, the catalogue is being published in German and English by the Prestel Verlag. In addition to the co-editor and project director Dr Nerina Santorius, the authors include Prof André Dombrowski, University of Pennsylvania, and Prof S. Hollis Clayson, Northwestern University.

The exhibition Digitorial
With the Digitorial developed especially for the show, the Städel is moreover offering a new digital educational medium. A responsive website presents worthwhile background information, art-historical and culture-historical contexts and fundamental exhibition contents. The free digital format in German and English enables the public to tune in to the exhibition themes before visiting the exhibition. The multimedia combination of image, sound, film and text interlinks the contents in a multiplicity of ways and provides entirely new means of depicting, narrating and mediating art. The Digitorial is accessible at monet.staedelmuseum.de.

List of artists
Frédéric Bazille (1841–1870), Édouard Béliard (Edmond Joseph Béliard) (1832–1912), Eugène Boudin (1824–1898), Mary Cassatt (1844–1926), Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), Antoine Chintreuil (1814–1873), Camille Corot (1796–1875), Gustave Courbet (1819–1877), Charles-François Daubigny (1817–1878), Edgar Degas (1834–1917), Armand Guillaumin (1841–1927), Charles Jacque (1813–1894), Johan Barthold Jongkind (1819–1891), Stanislas Lépine (1835–1892), Édouard Manet (1832–1883), Jean-François Millet (1814–1875), Claude Monet (1840–1926), Berthe Morisot (1841–1895), Camille Pissarro (1831–1903), Auguste Renoir (1841–1919), Henri Rouart (1833–1912), Théodore Rousseau (1812–1867), Alfred Sisley (1839–1899), Félix Ziem (1821–1911).

MONET AND THE BIRTH OF IMPRESSIONISM

Curator: Dr Felix Krämer, Head of Modern Art Department
Project management: Dr Nerina Santorius, Assistant Curator of Modern Art Department
Exhibition dates: 11 March – 28 June 2015

Information: www.staedelmuseum.de, info@staedelmuseum.de, phone +49(0)69-605098-0, fax +49(0)69-605098-111
Visitors’ service: +49(0)69-605098-232, besucherdienst@staedelmuseum.de
Venue: Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt am Main

Opening hours until 8 June: Tue, Wed, Sat, Sun 10 am ‒ 7 pm, Thu + Fri 10 am ‒ 9 pm
closed Mondays
From 9 to 28 June: Daily 10am – 9pm
also Mondays
Special opening hours: 14th, 24th and 25th May / 4th and 26th June 2015 10 am ‒ 7 pm
Admission: 14 euros, reduced 12 euros, family ticket 24 euros; free admission for children up to twelve years of age; groups of at least ten persons: reduced admission per person. Booking required for groups: +49(0)69-605098-200 or info@staedelmuseum.de.
Advance ticket sales: tickets.staedelmuseum.de

Catalogue: A comprehensive catalogue edited by Felix Krämer will be published by Prestel to accompany the exhibition. With a preface by Max Hollein and texts by Christoph Asendorf, Eva Bader, Marlene Bielefeld, Hollis Clayson, André Dombrowski, Chantal Eschenfelder, Dorothee Hansen, Felicity Korn, Felix Krämer, Svenja Mordhorst, Ingrid Pfeiffer, Isolde Pludermacher, Nele Putz, Nerina Santorius, Beate Söntgen, and Maria Zinser. German and English editions, c. 300 pages, 39.90 euros (museum edition). Booklet: A booklet will be forthcoming on the occasion of the exhibition. German and English editions, 7.50 euros.
Digitorial: The Digitorial has been made possible by the Aventis Foundation. It can be accessed at monet.staedelmuseum.de. Audio guide: The audio guide has been made possible with support from the Georg und Franziska Speyer’sche Hochschulstiftung. It provides a guided tour of the exhibition in German and English. The audio guide was recoreded by the actress Diane Kruger. The fee for one audio guide is 4 EUR, for two audio guides 7 EUR.

Social Media: The Städel Museum communicates the exhibition in the social media with the hashtags #monet und #staedel.

General guided tours through the exhibition: Tue + Sat 3.00 p.m., Wed + Sun 11.00 a.m., Thur 7.00 p.m., Fri 5.00 p.m. Tickets: 5 euros plus admission; tickets will be available starting two hours before each tour, Wed + Sun as of 10.00 a.m., at the cash desk of the Städel Museum.
Lunchtime Special: admission + guided tour through the special exhibition (available only online), Tue to So 1.00 p.m., 18 euros, tickets.staedelmuseum.de.

Sponsored by: Commerzbank Foundation
Media Partner: Alnatura, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Verkehrsgesellschaft Frankfurt am Main
Mobility Partner: Deutsche Bahn AG
Cultural Partner: hr2-kultur The exhibition advertising campaign at Frankfurt Airport is supported by Fraport AG and Media Frankfurt.

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: Facts & Figures

200 Years Städel: Exhibition Program

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

The Städel Museum’s jubilee year starts with an exhibition of outstanding drawings and etchings by the French artist Jean-Jacques de Boissieu (1736–1810), which will be on display in the Exhibition Hall of the Department of Prints and Drawings from 11 February until 10 May 2015. Boissieu was already highly acclaimed beyond France in his lifetime. Not only princes but also private collectors like Johann Friedrich Städel (1728‒1816) 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 Boissieu. These works are not only part of the Städel Museum’s oldest holdings but constitute one of the most comprehensive collections of Boissieu’s works in Germany. The thirteen drawings and eighty-three etchings which have been selected to be shown in the Städel’s special presentation offer an impressive insight into the artist’s production. Though created in a period of historically revolutionary events around the French Revolution, Boissieu’s oeuvre mirrors the landscape and life of the province around his 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 closeness to reality fuelled by his study of nature that hints at a bourgeois understanding of art independent of any academic norms.

“We have decided to show some very special works from the more than one hundred thousand items of our Department of Prints and Drawings to start our bicentennial program off. The exhibition not only presents Johann Friedrich Städel as a knowledgeable collector of art but also aims at making our public familiar with a brilliant draftsman and engraver,” says Max Hollein, Director of the Städel Museum.

“The rich holdings of Boissieu’s etchings and drawings in Johann Friedrich Städel’s collection testify to the taste of the Frankfurt banker and spice merchant, who, as a collector, not only acquired outstanding works by old masters but was equally interested in the art of his day,” emphasizes Dr. Jutta Schütt, Head of the Städel’s Department of Prints and Drawings after 1750.

Born in Lyon in 1736, Jean-Jacques de Boissieu mainly dedicated himself to drawings and engravings in his work as an artist. While he produced about one thousand drawings and 151 etchings, only a small number of paintings has come down on us. Boissieu, who came from a Southern French gentry family and lost his father, a physician, in his early childhood, attended a free-of charge drawing school in his native Lyon, enjoying an education that was intended to serve the local silk industry. A Lyon art dealer encouraged him to try his hand at etching. As Boissieu had not studied at an art academy, he was considered an amateur in his day. The politically and socially turbulent times surrounding the French Revolution did not leave any marks on Boissieu’s oeuvre. His production comprises bourgeois private subjects and motific themes such as landscapes, portraits, and likenesses of family members as well as everyday and generalizing genre representations.

The presentation in the Exhibition Hall of the Städel’s Department of Prints and Drawings commences with a self-portrait by the sixty-year-old artist, an etching dating from 1796 and executed in two versions: the first shows Boissieu with a portrait of his wife in his hands, which has given way to a rustic idyll in the later sheet. The self-understanding of this artist who did not spend his life in Paris, the capital, but in Lyon, the country’s second largest city after Paris at the time, is rooted in his family and the region he was born in. The exhibition highlights these two strands with portraits such as that of his younger brother (c. 1781) or a motif like Soap Bubbles (1799), which might remind the viewer of the artist’s sons, on the one hand. On the other, there are topographical views of the city of Lyon and the scenery surrounding it, among them the etching View of the Rhône Bridge in Lyon (1761) presented as a striking example next to a watercolor dating from the year before. The painterly rendering of the structure, the distribution of light and shadow, and the atmospheric effect achieved this way clearly evidence the work’s original quality.

The art of Boissieu’s work is pivoted on portraits and genre pictures besides landscapes. One sheet assembles individual eye-catching faces and representations of both known and unknown persons ‒ physiognomic studies reminiscent of the Swiss philosopher and author Johann Caspar Lavater’s (1741–1801) publications dating from about the same time. The artist’s genre scenes render aspects of the region’s contemporary everyday world and are about listening (The Oboist, 1782) and watching (Portrait of the One-Hundred-Year-Old Man from Lyon, 1780), about teaching and learning (The Class, 1780), giving and taking (Old Man Giving Alms, 1780), work and craft (Large Coopers, 1790), about resting and playing, youth and old age. Beyond these primarily bourgeois private subjects, the presentation comprises merely a few etchings recording such outstanding current events as Pope Pius VII’s stay in Lyon in 1804.

With prints like the etching Les grands charlatans (1772) after a painting by Karel Dujardin (c. 1622–1678), the exhibition also explores adaptions of works by Dutch artists of the seventeenth century, which are no reproduction prints in the usual sense but by and large free transpositions. The example of his small etchings of heads and figures arranged in the form of scenes published under the title Griffonnements (Doodles) in 1758, which are also presented at the Städel, already reveals the artist’s orientation toward Dutch seventeenth-century art, which perfectly corresponds with the increased interest in the era to be observed in his time.

Jean-Jacques de Boissieu ranks among the great eighteenth-century masters of print. Though he spent most of his life in Lyon, he established the best connections with various publishers in Paris, for example, but also in Nuremberg and Mannheim and enjoyed a high standing throughout his life. That he was a member of the Institut de France as well as of the academies of Lyon, Florence, and Bologna indicates the artist’s renown. After a longer stay in Paris between 1762 and 1764, where he got to know influential artists such as Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805) or collectors like Pierre-Jean Mariette (1694–1774), Boissieu, joining the entourage of Louis-Alexandre de La Rochefoucauld, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1743–1792), visited Genoa, Naples, and Rome. In the course of this journey, he met a number of personalities pointing the way like the philosopher and author Voltaire (1694–1778) or the archaeologist and art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768). When travelling, he recorded his immediate impressions with his brushes, focusing on landscapes unfolding in the light. From then on, he fell back on these Italian nature studies for his works again and again, using them as direct models or memory props for etchings of freely composed landscapes throughout his life. Johann Friedrich Städel succeeded in acquiring one of Boissieu’s much sought-after Italian brush drawings, Ruins of the Temple of Apollo on the Shores of Lake Avernus (1765), for his foundation ‒ a sheet that will also be displayed in the Städel’s exhibition.

After his journey through Italy, Boissieu returned to his native Lyon and became a civil servant to the Crown in 1771, a post that ensured him a regular livelihood until the outbreak of the French Revolution. His noble descent, which had opened many doors for him until then, suddenly turned into a threat to his life. Finally, however, an official statement from Paris placed him and his works under protection.

In 1801, the sixty-five-year-old artist published a catalogue raisonné of his etchings. Johann Friedrich Städel acquired a copy supplemented by the artist in his own hand, which will also be part of the exhibition. Having cooperated with various Paris publishers for a few years early on, Boissieu took the distribution of his prints into his own hands in 1764. Only in his old age, from 1807 on, he had publishers ‒ this time Frauenholz in Nuremberg and Artaria in Mannheim ‒ represent his works again. Städel seems to have been supplied by these German dealers. We do not know whether the collector ever came into contact with the artist he revered. It is indicative of the Frankfurt citizen’s good taste and foresight that he included the works of a French contemporary pursuing his own way into the ensemble of his collection. There is something else Städel and Boissieu had in common: Boissieu had also set up his own collection of artworks. As an artist, collector, and connoisseur of art, Boissieu was even asked to join the committee responsible for preparing the establishment of a museum in Lyon. Their decisive role in founding a museum is another aspect the two contemporaries had in common.

Jean-Jacques de Boissieu. A contemporary of Städel's

Curator: Dr Jutta Schütt, Head of the Department of Prints and Drawings after 1750

Exhibition dates: 11 February to 10 May 2015
Press preview: Tuesday, 10 February 2015, 11.00 a.m.
Venue: Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt

Information: www.staedelmuseum.de, info@staedelmuseum.de, phone +49(0)69-605098-0, fax +49(0)69-605098-111
Visitor services: +49(0)69-605098-232, besucherdienst@staedelmuseum.de

Opening hours of the Städel Museum:
Tue, Wed, Sat, Sun, and holidays 10.00 a.m. – 6.00 p.m.; Thur and Fri 10.00 a.m. – 9.00 p.m.;
from 11 March 2015 Tue, Wed, Sat, Sun, and holidays 10.00 a.m. –7 p.m., Thur and Fri 10.00 a.m. – 9.00 p.m.
Special opening hours: 3 April, 5 April, and 6 April 2015 10.00 a.m. – 7.00 p.m.; 1 May 2015 10.00 a.m. – 7.00 p.m.
Admission: 12 euros, reduced 10 euros, family ticket 20 euros; free admission for children up to twelve years of age; Sat, Sun, and holidays 14 Euro, reduced 12 euros, family ticket 24 euros.
From 11 March 2015 14 euros, reduced 12 euros, family ticket 24 euros; free admission for children up to twelve years of age; groups of at least ten persons: reduced admission per person. Groups by appointment only: please call +49(0)69-605098-200 or contact info@staedelmuseum.de.
Advance ticket sales: tickets.staedelmuseum.de

Opening hours of the Study Hall, Department of Prints and Drawings: Wed, Fri 2.00–5.00 p.m.; Thur 2.00–7.00 p.m.

General guided tours through the exhibition: Fri 7.00 p.m., Sun 3.00 p.m.
Special tours by request: +49(0)69-605098-200, info@staedelmuseum.de
Further offers at www.staedelmuseum.de

This coming Sunday, the 15th of March 2015; marks the two-hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Städel Museum. Germany’s oldest civic museum foundation is observing the historic day with a grand public celebration. Under the motto “200 Years Städel: A Gift for Everyone”, a comprehensive programme of guided tours, workshops and chamber music performed by the hr-Sinfonieorchester will await the visitor. In the time-tested tradition of Johann Friedrich Städel’s foundation vision, the Frankfurt museum is sustained by broad patronage on all levels, and this anniversary year is no exception. On the occasion of the bicentennial, for example, citizens have made donations to the Städel amounting to several millions of euros, agreed to sponsor exhibition rooms, and started their own fundraising initiatives for the civic museum. What is more, after donations of works Jusepe de Ribera, Guido Reni, Edgar Degas und Philip Guston, just within the past weeks the Städel has received further birthday gifts, among them prominent works by Bettina von Arnim, Eugène Carrière, Bruno Goller, Karl Hofer, Mike Kelley, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Albert Oehlen and Moritz von Schwind, but also, not least importantly, rare photographs by the Bisson brothers, Helmar Lerski and others, as well as vintage prints by Horst P. Horst.

From 10 June to 6 September 2015 ‒ in its bicentennial year “200 Years Städel” ‒ Frankfurt’s Städel Museum will be presenting prints by the English painter, engraver and etcher William Hogarth (1697‒1764). Altogether seventy works including the famous printmaking series A Harlot’s Progress (1732), A Rake’s Progress (1735) and Marriage à la Mode (1745) will be on view in the exhibition hall of the Department of Prints and Drawings. These visual novels from the Städel holdings take the fashions, vices and downsides of modern life in the London metropolis as their themes. Hogarth conceived of his artworks as printed theatre of his times and with them he laid the cornerstone for socio-critical caricature in England. The prints owe their special quality to the keen powers of perception and caustic humour of an artist who contributed so greatly to shaping the image of his era that it is still referred to as “Hogarth’s England” today. Executed during Johann Friedrich Städel’s lifetime, the engravings are among the Städel’s oldest holdings and mirror the critical spirit inherent to this institution since its founding.

The exhibition is being sponsored by the Hessische Kulturstiftung.

William Hogarth was born in London in 1697. In keeping with an early eighteenth-century fashion, his father Richard opened a coffee house at which only Latin was spoken. The business failed, and Richard Hogarth had to serve five years in London’s notorious Fleet Prison for failure to pay his debts. As was usual at the time, his wife and children had to accompany him. In 1713, after his father’s release, William Hogarth began an apprenticeship as a silver engraver where he also learned the rudiments of the complex techniques of intaglio printing ‒ engraving and etching. Following his seven-year training, he went into business for himself as an engraver and attended the privately run St Martin’s Lane Academy, an art school in London, to acquire the art of painting. In 1724 he also became a member of the academy of royal court painter James Thornhill (1675‒1734), whose daughter Jane he married in 1729. It was not with his paintings, however, that Hogarth achieved a breakthrough with the public, but with the prints made after his works on canvas. With the series A Harlot’s Progress, produced in the early 1730s, he founded a new genre he later dubbed modern moral subjects. Hogarth conceived of these subjects as contemporary, moral-didactic history scenes. He thus took a stand against the hierarchization of the visual arts, a firmly entrenched principle of academy doctrine which granted classical history painting pride of place. With his printmaking works, he succeeded in creating a new, up-to-date genre based on the keen observation of reality. In 1755 Hogarth was elected to the Royal Society of Arts, which he quit again just two years later on account of artistic and personal differences. His appointment as royal court painter followed in 1757, but never led to any commissions. The final years of the artist’s life were overshadowed by bitter disputes between himself and his critics. A stroke in 1763 left Hogarth severely handicapped and he died the following year in his home in Leicester Fields, a district of London.

The presentation in the exhibition gallery of the Department of Prints and Drawings focuses primarily on those of William Hogarth’s printmaking series that earned him international fame: A Harlot’s Progress, A Rake’s Progress und Marriage à la Mode. There is a very simple reason for the fact that his works on paper secured him a place in art history: prints can be circulated far better than paintings. It was by these means that the artist reached the enlightened and educated public of his day in large numbers. Already the first edition of A Harlot’s Progress (1732) comprised 1,240 sold copies. In six episodes, this series describes the rise and fall of a young woman who has come from the country to the city to find work. To earn a living she ends up as a prostitute and lands in prison as a result. The final scene shows the wretched funeral of the protagonist, whose life has already come to an end at the age of twenty-three. Hogarth had numerous real and literary models to look to for his creation of this figure. Inspired by his great interest in the social characterization of his time, he directed his critical, ironical gaze to all strata of society, from the highest nobility to the most abject circumstances. The sick and needy of all generations formed the downside of the economic boom enjoyed by the colonial and commercial metropolis and its many profiteers.

In his second series, A Rake’s Progress (1735), consisting of eight prints, Hogarth tells the story of the social decline of Tom Rakewell, who brainlessly squanders his inheritance and is thrown first into debtors’ prison and then the madhouse. Rakewell’s incarceration on grounds of indebtedness is reminiscent of the artist’s own biography. Entirely unlike his father, however, William Hogarth was an excellent businessman and very clever at taking advantage of the London press ‒ which was flourishing in his day ‒ and its public impact for his own purposes. In newspapers such as the London Daily Post, the General Advertiser or the London Journal he published announcements of his prints and advertised them for subscription.

Hogarth borrowed the title of his third major series, published in 1745, from a comedy by John Dryden (1631‒1700). Marriage à la Mode is about an espousal arranged by the two spouses’ fathers. Neither the bride nor the groom is the least bit interested in the other, both amuse themselves on the side, and the situation comes to a dramatic conclusion. Hogarth’s protagonists feign innocence and practise deception, abandon themselves to their passions and founder on their false ideals. Looking to true stories for orientation and integrating well-known persons and recognizable sites, he warned his public of the dangers of modern life ‒ dangers still very real today. In 1751, with his popular prints Beer Street and Gin Lane, he supported a public campaign against the excessive consumption of gin. The former scene presents the enjoyment of beer as healthy and beneficial in contrast to the destructive effects of gin portrayed in the latter.

From mid century onward, in addition to socio-critical themes Hogarth also devoted himself to matters of national and political relevance, which represent a further focus of the exhibition. In several works, the artist addressed the relationship between France and England, which were at war. The Gate of Calais (1748) was his response to his arrest on suspicion of espionage during one of his trips to France. In 1756, in The Invasion, he again caricatured the French as grotesque, haggard figures who are after the tasty beer and luscious roast beef of the English. Some fifteen years later, in the print The Times, Plate 1 (1762), Hogarth made an urgent appeal for the cessation of the Seven Years’ War.

In 1753, Hogarth published his own art-theoretical deliberations in the book The Analysis of Beauty. In it he concerned himself with the foundations of visual-artistic production and particularly the matter of how to achieve beauty and grace. Hogarth considered the study of nature to be the key to beauty. He called upon his readers to perceive the objects of nature with their own eyes and judge them according to rational criteria. The German writer Christlob Mylius (1722–1754) was in London when Hogarth’s Analysis came out, and he translated it into German the very next year. Johann Friedrich Städel had a copy of this translation in his library, and it will be on display in the show.

The exhibition “Vices of Life. The Prints of William Hogarth” will be accompanied by a catalogue. Following its presentation at the Städel Museum, the show will be on view at Neuhardenberg Castle.

Vices of Life. The Prints of William Hogarth

Curator: Annett Gerlach (Städel Museum)
Exhibition dates: 10 June to 6 September 2015
Press preview: Tuesday, 9 June 2015, 11:00 am
Location: Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt

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

General guided tours of the exhibition: Fri 7:00 pm, Sun 3:00 pm (participation in the guided tour is included in the admission fee)
Special guided tours on request; please contact: +49(0)69-605098-200 or info@staedelmuseum.de
Information on further events and activities: www.staedelmuseum.de

Catalogue: In conjunction with the exhibition, the Städel Museum is publishing a catalogue by Annett Gerlach. Approx. 50 pages, 9.90 EUR

Städel Museum opening hours:
Tue, Wed, Sat, Sun and holidays 10:00 am ‒ 7:00 pm, Thu + Fri 10:00 am ‒ 9:00 pm
Special opening hours: 24 May, 25 May, 4 June 10:00 am ‒ 7:00 pm
From Tuesday, 9 June to Sunday, 28 June: open daily, including Mondays 10:00 am ‒ 9:00 pm

Admission: 14 EUR, reduced 12 EUR, family ticket 24 EUR; admission free for children to the age of 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: tickets.staedelmuseum.de

Department of Prints and Drawings, Study Hall opening hours:
Wed, Fri 2:00 ‒ 5:00 pm, Thu 2:00 ‒ 7:00 pm

Sponsored by: Hessische Kulturstiftung

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 90 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.

The exhibition is being sponsored by the Deutsche Bank AG.

“With this exhibition, the Städel is unearthing a vast treasure chest of paintings that have been viewed through the spectacles of traditional clichés for too long – works that belong to our collective pictorial memory on the one hand, but can well stand to be reassessed and perceived anew in their painterly potency and conceptual complexity on the other”, observes Städel Museum director Max Hollein.

The contemporary, historicizing perspective on this indisputably complex aesthetic phenomenon offers a means of discerning structural similarities and testing new art-historical approaches and inquiries without overlooking the diversity of the art it produced. Without negating the originality and diversity of these paintings, the show will pose the question as to where this painting came from, what stance it takes on its own tradition in the so-called post-modern environment, and what role it might play for the present through a new or more discerning localization in its own time: “What we are dealing with here is a generation of artists who, in a clearly defined period, triggered a tremendously controversial response with the sheer vehemence of their presence and the novelty of their painting. At the same time, to this day there is no coherent narrative that meaningfully links these paintings with what came before and what came after. This complex set of circumstances makes it necessary to characterize – from the art-historical and museological points of view – the significance of these paintings for the subsequent generation of artists as well as their relationship to their own tradition”, comments Dr Martin Engler, head of the Städel’s collection of contemporary art and curator of the exhibition.

The show “The 80s. Figurative Painting in West Germany” aims to pave new, unobstructed access to an era in the history of painting that has all too often fallen through the cracks of discourse, and whose special qualities have been overshadowed by their pop-cultural context – however important and formative the latter may have been. Without wanting to disregard this specific context, the show will endeavour an art-historical perspective that also takes the connection to post-war painting into account. The West German and West Berlin painting of the 1980s is by no means to be regarded as isolated from artistic forerunners such as Georg Baselitz, Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke; at the same time, it clearly dissociated itself from those influences. The generation that emerged around 1980 in Germany’s art centres ‒ Berlin, Hamburg and the Rhineland ‒ produced paintings whose energy, intensity and directness distinguishes their art from everything that had preceded it. Owing to the unusual expressive force characterizing the artists of the eighties, contemporary art criticism associated them with German Expressionism and the French Fauves. They were given numerous labels such as the “Junge Wilde” (“Wild Youth”) or “Neo-Expressionists”, and they themselves exhibited their works under the heading “Heftige Malerei” (“Fierce Painting”). None of these designations ever really took hold, however, not least of all because of the fact that the movement was unquestionably heterogeneous in nature. Despite the critics’ scepticism, the artists soon made it big on the art market, even if that success ebbed after a few years with the perspective of time. In view of the fast pace of that eventful decade, little time remained for art history. The large-scale survey “The 80s. Figurative Painting in West Germany” will bring home to its visitors that – even today, thirty years later –, however familiar we are with it, the representational painting of that era still has a disconcertingly alien quality.

The exhibition will present superb loans, among them works from museum collections such as the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt, the Klassik Stiftung Weimar, Neues Museum Weimar or the Berlinische Galerie – Landesmuseum für Moderne Kunst, numerous private loans, works from the Deutsche Bank collection, and nine examples from the Städel’s own holdings, including three paintings that made their way into the museum in 2008 as part of a group of altogether six hundred works from the Deutsche Bank collection.

A tour of the exhibition

Arranged both geographically and thematically, the presentation will spread out over both floors of the Städel’s exhibition annex. The respective West German art centres will thus on the one hand be mirrored along with their distinguishing and contradictory affinities and diversities; on the other hand, their shared thematic or motivic interests will be featured as a way of shedding light on the connections between them. The show will get underway with the classical genre of portrait painting. Particularly the self-portraits, for example Albert Oehlen’s Self-Portrait with Palette (1984); Werner Büttner’s Self-Portrait Masturbating at the Cinema (1980), Luciano Castelli’s Berlin Nite (1979) or Walter Dahn’s Self Double (1982), mirror the artists’ intense investigation of the painting medium. Still frequently drawing on traditional painterly themes, the “Neue Welle” (“New Wave”) of painting in the eighties was characterized above all by its experimental and dynamic stylistic pluralism. Even if, with his self-portrait, Albert Oehlen subscribed to an astonishingly traditional variation on this pictorial subject, it remains unclear whether he was affirming, reviewing, caricaturing or meaninglessly repeating it, or all of the above.

The confrontation with the artist ego in the first room is followed by a geographically defined group in the second. The painters associated with the Galerie am Moritzplatz, which was founded in the West Berlin district of Kreuzberg in 1977 by Rainer Fetting, Helmut Middendorf, and Salomé and Bernd Zimmer, formed the core. G. L. Gabriel became a member in 1979, and exhibited in group and solo shows at Moritzplatz until the gallery’s dissolution in 1981. The Berlin of that period – a liberal, chaotic city beyond the reaches of the Bundeswehr (Federal German armed forces) and the conservative West German province – was the principle motif for these painters, who had come to the metropolis from the West German states. Rainer Fetting painted the Berlin Wall in a wide range of variations. For him, however, the Wall was initially just a part of everyday life and the view from his studio window, and not the political statement it is perceived as from the perspective of viewers some three decades later. Whereas artists such as Fetting, Gabriel or Middendorf addressed themselves to the urban architecture, Bernd Zimmer executed landscape paintings in which he examined the boundary between figure and abstraction. The juxtaposition of Zimmer’s Field, Rape (1979) and Fetting’s Van Gogh and Wall Sun (1979) demonstrates the diversity of the painterly approaches ‒ from colour-field to an almost purely gestural, disintegrative style. A fundamental element in the work of the Berlin artists was the Punk and sub-culture scene forming in those years, whose dynamic and rawness they adopted in their work. This is especially vivid, for example, in Electric Night (1979) by Helmut Middendorf. Not just the schematically depicted figures in the colourful jungle of the night are “electrified” here, but to the same degree the painting itself, already in the colour combination alone: intensely vibrant ultramarine and gaudily bright red.

The “electrified big-city natives” reappear in Big Shower (1981) by Rainer Fetting, in a certain sense as classical nude models in various poses. The body discourse thus introduced was carried forward in Salomé’s paintings. His works confront the viewer with homo-erotic nude depictions that were drastic, as political as they were radical, and above all explicit, and clearly transcended the social norms of the period in question. They will be joined by such works as Golden Man Beating Slut (1980) by Albert Oehlen or Christa Näher’s mystical-looking works visualizing encounters of hermaphroditic creatures, half-human and half-animal. One theme here is the role played by the sexes in the partner relationship, another the permissive depiction of erotic fantasies far removed from middle-class morals. Middendorf, for example, translated the intensity and crudeness of the subculture into his series Big-City Natives with a fierce brushstroke, thus introducing his surroundings into his works in a wholly different manner.

While on the ground floor the body discourse will already allude indirectly to political aspects, the second part of the presentation on the first floor will begin with a number of works of clearly political motivation. In addition to icons such as Albert Oehlen’s Fuehrer’s Headquarters (1982), the room will also feature Fetting’s First Painting of the Wall (1977), Salomé’s Haematorrhoea (1979) or Hans Peter Adamski’s MAO portrait (1983). Also on view will be paintings like Dokoupil’s Star in Distress, (1982), which no sooner make use of political symbols than they dissolve the accompanying contexts of meaning. This description also applies to Kippenberger’s key work With the Best Will in the World, I Can't See a Swastika (1984). The swastika, both visible and invisible, undermines, questions and ironizes the political symbol to equal degrees. The title gives the viewer of the work a reference to its subject but never really comes through on the visual level. Kippenberger arranged abstract geometric forms in such a way that they seem on the verge of forming ideologically charged symbols, but never actually do. The works presented in this section of the show will demonstrate that the political aspects of the paintings are just one meta level, one of many constantly oscillating thematic set-pieces producing ever new contexts of meaning.

The paintings of the Hamburg scene around Werner Büttner, Georg Herold, Martin Kippenberger, and Albert and Markus Oehlen will pick up the thread of the political discourse in the following room. The group is not as clearly definable in geographical terms; what they shared, rather, was their association with Sigmar Polke’s academy class in Hamburg and Max Hetzler’s gallery. Unlike the “Moritz boys” in Berlin, the Hamburg group did not form primarily as an exhibition collective, but rather as an alliance of friends. Kippenberger, Albert Oehlen and Büttner first met in Hamburg in 1977; Georg Herold came to Hamburg from Munich the same year. Ina Barfuss and Thomas Wachweger, who had already been friends of Martin Kippenberger’s since the early 1970s, left the Hansa city in 1978 with Kippenberger to go to Berlin. Whereas the Berliners around Fetting and Middendorf cultivated a direct, unequivocal approach to painting, that of the artists around Oehlen and Kippenberger was less straightforward, devoted, as it was, to questioning the image, subject and contents of painting again and again. Their works are in a category somewhere between painting and text, between pathos, cliché and banality, and consistently treat social and political themes with an ironic/sarcastic undertone. The artists showed their paintings in Berlin as early as 1979 in the exhibition “Elend” (“Misery”) organized by Kippenberger and taking place in “Kippenbergers Büro”. As the artist stressed, the chief concern was “to do something together” and not to work isolated from one another. Kippenberger pursued this idea of community not only in organized group shows but also in other actions in his “office” or at the Club SO36 he ran from 1978 onward; it culminated in 1981 in the major group exhibition “Rundschau Deutschland I” (“Germany Review I”) in Munich. In the Städel exhibition, it will be reflected in the third room on the first floor in the works of the so-called satellites or mavericks. Examples by Ina Barfuss and Thomas Wachweger, by Bettina Semmer, Volker Tannert, Andreas Schulze and the group “Normal”, consisting of Peter Angermann, Jan Knap and Milan Kunc, will be on display here.

The third geographically oriented room will follow, featuring the “Mülheimer Freiheit”. From 1980 onward, Hans Peter Adamski, Peter Bömmels, Walter Dahn, Jiří Georg Dokoupil, Gerard Kever and Gerhard Naschberger worked in a joint studio in the street by that name in the Deutz district of Cologne. Dahn recorded the group’s founding on canvas in his work The Birth of the Mülheimer Freiheit (1981). Though academically trained, none of the six artists had undergone classical training as a painter. Their subjects were the art scene itself, as well as the banalities of everyday life, which they discussed and ‘processed’ artistically. The “Mülheimer Freiheit” cultivated a deliberately aestheticized dilettantism that manifested itself in clichéd, kitschy and banal ‒ but from the painterly point of view always fascinating ‒ works. This directness and lack of scruple also found expression in joint works by Dahn and Dokoupil such as Untitled (Vomiter II) (1980). The works produced by the “Mülheimer Freiheit” are particularly vivid illustrations of the stylistic pluralism that distinguished new art around 1980 in general.

This fascinating multifariousness is evident not only in the comparison between the various groups and artists, but even within the œuvres of the individual artists. Their works are characterized by the same openness, the same heterogeneity, with regard to form and content alike. What links these artists above and beyond their diversity, however, is their capacity to bring even the greatest aesthetic as well as thematic contrasts together to create entirely cohesive compositions. Their paintings can be read as poetic pictorial metaphors whose meaning changes with every reading.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue edited by Martin Engler and published by Hatje Cantz Verlag, with a foreword by Max Hollein, texts by Zdenek Felix, Walter Grasskamp, Martin Engler and Franziska Leuthäusser, and a panel discussion with Walter Grasskamp, Max Hetzler and Ingrid Raab.

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.

The exhibition digitorial
With the digitorial developed especially for the show, the Städel is offering an additional digital mediation format. The responsive website conveys background information, art and cultural-historical contexts, and themes of fundamental relevance for the exhibition. Sponsored by the Aventis Foundation and available in German and English, this digital offer is free of charge and provides the public with a means of tuning in to the exhibition before coming to the museum. With image, sound, film and text, the multimedia application combines the contents in a multifaceted presentation and opens up entirely new paths in the depiction, narration and mediation of art. The digitorial is available on 80er.staedelmuseum.de.

THE 80s. FIGURATIVE PAINTING IN WEST GERMANY

Curators: Dr Martin Engler, head of the collection of contemporary art; Franziska Leuthäußer, assistant curator of contemporary art
Exhibition dates: 22 July to 18 October 2015
Press preview: Tuesday, 21 July 2015, 11 am

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, Sun and holidays 10 am ‒ 6 pm, Thu + Fri 10 am ‒ 9 pm
Special opening hours: Sat, 3 Oct. 205: 10 am ‒ 6 pm
Admission: 14 EUR, reduced 12 EUR, family ticket 24 EUR; admission free for children to the age of 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

Catalogue: The exhibition will be accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue published by Hatje Cantz Verlag and edited by Martin Engler. With a foreword by Max Hollein and texts by Martin Engler, Zdenek Felix, Walter Grasskamp, Franziska Leuthäusser and others, and a panel discussion with Walter Grasskamp, Max Hetzler and Ingrid Raab. In German, 264 pages, 276 illustrations, 34.90 EUR (museum edition)

Digitorial: The digitorial is being made possible by the Aventis Foundation. Design and programming: Scholz & Volkmer. Available on: 80er.staedelmuseum.de

Social Media: The Städel Museum is communicating the exhibition on the social media with the hashtags #80er and #staedel.

General guided tours of the exhibition: Tue 5 pm, Sun 11 am. Tickets: 4 EUR in addition to the admission fee, available starting two hours before the tour begins (Sundays from 10 am) at the Städel cashier’s desk

Afternoon special: Admission + guided tour of the special exhibition (offer available online only), Saturdays at 3 pm, 16 EUR, tickets.staedelmuseum.de.
Evening special: Admission + guided tour of the special exhibition (offer available online only), Thursdays at 7 pm, 16 EUR, tickets.staedelmuseum.de.

Sponsored by: Deutsche Bank AG

Media partners: Cicero – Magazin für politische Kultur, Verkehrsgesellschaft Frankfurt am Main
Cultural partner: hr2-kultur

Altogether 432,121 visitors saw the Monet exhibition that closed last night at the Städel Museum. That number makes “Monet and the Birth of Impressionism” by far the most successful show in the museum’s two-hundred-year history. On this past weekend alone, 20,000 had the opportunity to visit the unparalleled special exhibition in Frankfurt am Main. The Städel shows hitherto achieving the highest visitor numbers were Botticelli (2009/2010, 367,033 visitors), followed by Dürer (2013/2014, 258,577 visitors). The average visitor number per day for the Monet exhibition was 4,278; some 150,000 visitors took advantage of the online advance ticket sales, which offered convenient admission to the show without long waiting times. Over the course of the exhibition’s fifteen-week duration (11 March to 28 June 2015), altogether 3,513 guided tours were conducted, including 2,232 special guided tours for groups and 595 for school classes, child day-care centres and universities. Some 25 per cent of the visitors made use of the audio guide narrated by actress Diane Kruger.

The museum’s digital presence also reports record user numbers. The newly developed Städel App has already been downloaded more than 25,000 times, and the Monet “digitorial” (http://monet.staedelmuseum.de), with which the Städel offered a multi-media online preparation course for one of its own exhibitions, has been invoked 260,000 times to date. The museum’s presence in the social networks also proved extremely popular during the exhibition runtime, as is mirrored in the steadily growing user numbers and ranges.

On the whole, with “Monet and the Birth of Impressionism” the Städel Museum succeeded in appealing to a broad public as well as the scholarly community in its endeavour to place a fresh new focus on the early years of Impressionism and elucidate Claude Monet’s special position within the history of French art. The bicentennial exhibition within the framework of “200 Years Städel” was accompanied by a wide-ranging media echo. “Monet and the Birth of Impressionism” met with an exceedingly broad and positive response – in the local, regional, national and international press.

“The Städel is more popular than ever. The immense success of the exhibition more than confirms that, with our work and our objectives, we are on the right path. The Städel has once again proven itself a place of art-historical research as well as an identity-establishing centre of society accessible to many different target groups. At the same time, the impressive reception of the digital offers accompanying the show demonstrates clearly that we will continue to carry the original notion of a citizens’ foundation into the future in a manner that upholds tradition while keeping pace with the times” comments Städel director Max Hollein.

The exhibition was made possible by the Commerzbank-Stiftung.

The next special exhibition to be presented by the Städel Museum in its anniversary year will be “The 80s: Figurative Painting in West Germany”, to take place from 22 July to 18 October 2015. Featuring approximately 100 works by altogether 27 artists, the show will shed light on the novel, disconcerting, and extremely dynamic figural painting that developed in the 1980s in Germany almost simultaneously in the centres Berlin, Hamburg, the Rhineland and elsewhere. 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.

MONET AND THE BIRTH OF IMPRESSIONISM

Curator: Dr Felix Krämer, Head of the Department of Modern Art
Project director: Dr Nerina Santorius, Curatorial Assistant in the Department of Modern Art

Exhibition dates: 11 March to 21 June 2015

Location: Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt am Main

Catalogue: The exhibition was accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue edited by Felix Krämer and published by Prestel Verlag. With a foreword by Max Hollein and texts by Christoph Asendorf, Eva Bader, Marlene Bielefeld, Hollis Clayson, André Dombrowski, Chantal Eschenfelder, Dorothee Hansen, Felicity Korn, Felix Krämer, Svenja Mordhorst, Ingrid Pfeiffer, Isolde Pludermacher, Nele Putz, Nerina Santorius, Beate Söntgen and Maria Zinser. German and English edition, approx. 300 pages, 39.90 EUR (museum edition).

Digitorial: The digitorial is supported by the Aventis Foundation. Even now – after the exhibition has closed – it can be accessed at monet.staedelmuseum.de. Design and programming: Scholz & Volkmer.

Audio guide: The audio guide was supported by the Georg und Franziska Speyer’sche Hochschulstiftung. Narrated by the actress Diane Kruger, it provided a guided tour of the exhibition in German and English.

Städel App: The Städel App is supported by the FAZIT-STIFTUNG. The app has been optimized for the newest generation of Android and iOS smartphones. It offered the audio guide to the exhibition in the form of a smartphone download. Available for downloading at www.staedelmuseum.de/de/angebote/staedel-app.

Social Media: The Städel Museum communicated the exhibition in the social media with the hashtags #monet and #staedel.

Supported by: Commerzbank-Stiftung

Media partners: Alnatura, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Verkehrsgesellschaft Frankfurt am Main
Mobility partner: Deutsche Bahn AG
Cultural partner: hr2-kultur
The exhibition advertising campaign at Frankfurt Airport was realized with support from Fraport AG and Media Frankfurt.

For its two-hundredth birthday the Städel Museum is expecting eminent guests: from 7 October 2015 to 24 January 2016, selected Städel works will host sixty-five masterpieces from the world’s most renowned museums for an anniversary exhibition entitled “Masterworks in Dialogue”. The outstanding Städel works will represent a cross-section of the museum’s history while at the same time offering insights into a collection that has evolved over two-hundred years. Companions from far and wide will join them in temporary partnerships and long-awaited unions. Planned by all of the Städel’s curators, the show will be the first ever to spread throughout the galleries of the museum’s collections. Loans from the Albertina in Vienna, the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin, the Mauritshuis in The Hague, the Tate in London, the Vatican Museums, the National Gallery of Art in Washington and elsewhere will travel to Frankfurt am Main for this special occasion. The superb “anniversary guests” will allow us to draw surprising art-historical references and to illuminate and examine the Städel holdings – spanning seven-hundred years of art – anew. “Masterworks in Dialogue: Eminent Guests for the Anniversary” will be accompanied by a series of lectures given by the Städel curators on the history of the museum; the writer Daniel Kehlmann will deliver the introductory talk at the exhibition opening.

This anniversary project is being made possible with financial support from the DZ Bank as corporate sponsor, as well as funds from the Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain gGmbH, the Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne, and the Kulturstiftung der Länder.

“In the bicentennial year, Städel favourites are meeting with stars from all over the world! This major anniversary project is an ideal occasion both to rediscover our collection – which constitutes the Städel’s identity and core – and to experience yet another highlight in the museum’s exhibition history in the form of intriguing and art-historically unique dialogues between the masterworks. Unparalleled in quality, number and heterogeneity, the exceptional loans are also a token of international esteem for the Städel. We are especially grateful for this phenomenal support from the world’s most famous collections on the occasion of our two-hundredth birthday”, comments Städel Museum director Max Hollein.

The anniversary exhibition will spread out on all four floors and in all areas of the Städel collection. The visitor embarking on a tour of the museum will encounter, for example, prominent “anniversary guests” by such artists as Jan van Eyck, Fra Angelico, Johannes Vermeer or Nicolas Poussin bearing close relationships to works from the Städel’s Old Masters collection. Masterworks by Edgar Degas, Max Liebermann, Pablo Picasso and Franz Marc will sojourn in the Modern Art collection, and examples by Martin Kippenberger, Georg Baselitz, Thomas Struth, Daniel Richter and Corinne Wasmuht will await discovery in the collection of Contemporary Art. The Department of Prints and Drawings will present opera magna by Adam Elsheimer, Edgar Degas, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Max Beckmann and Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn side by side with Städel treasures. The thematic pairs and groups thus formed – numbering forty in all – will be displayed on specially designed coloured pedestals serving not only to explain the ensuing dialogues but also to give them special prominence within the collection presentations.

Dialogues in the Old Masters Collection
In the Old Masters gallery, for instance, the Annunciation (ca. 1434/36) by Jan van Eyck (1390–1441) from the National Gallery of Art in Washington will encounter the same artist’s Lucca Madonna (1437) from the Städel. The two paintings are among the most beautiful and, in terms of content, most complex Marian images by the most well-known Early Netherlandish artist. Works distinguished by their stunning realism of detail and elaborate spatial and temporal structures, they are still admired for their exquisite artistic rendering today, nearly six hundred years after their execution. Until 1850, both belonged to the splendid Old Masters collection of King William II of the Netherlands; now they will be on view side by side for the first time again in 165 years.
Two portraits of women, one of the fifteenth and one of the nineteenth century, will come together in no less spectacular a meeting: Sandro Botticelli’s (1445–1510) Idealized Portrait of a Lady (Portrait of Simonetta Vespucci as a Nymph) of ca. 1480/85 from the Städel and Fazio’s Mistress (Aurelia) (1863) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) from the London Tate will form companion pieces. Not only will one of the most famous works from each of these museums’ collections thus be united, but the direct comparison will shed light on astonishing similarities despite the temporal distance of nearly four centuries. The complex manner in which the painting by the Pre-Raphaelite Rossetti reflects on Botticelli’s Simonetta, compositionally speaking, has hitherto gone unrecognized and will now become strikingly evident in the joint display. Both paintings bear a relation to a literary and artistic discourse on the ideal image of female beauty that was revived by the Pre-Raphaelites in the context of studying the works of their Italian idols.

Dialogues in the Modern Art Collection
Hardly any of the Städel Museum’s paintings is as well-known to the public as Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein’s (1751–1829) portrait of Goethe in the Roman Campagna of 1787. Surrounded by testimonies to antiquity, the “prince of poets”, wrapped in a travelling cloak, reposes contemplatively in an ideal Arcadian landscape. On the occasion of the show, this centrepiece of the Frankfurt collection will be presented along with several preliminary studies. What is more, works making reference to the painting will once again bear witness to the popularity of the iconic, world-famous portrait of Goethe. Tischbein began the portrait in 1786, when Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) was sharing living quarters with him and other artists in Rome during his travels in Italy. In later depictions the painting was quoted again and again – now reverently, now tongue-in-cheek – for example in a proposal by Adolf von Donndorf (1835–1916) for the Goethe monument in Berlin and in Andy Warhol’s (1928–1987) silkscreen of 1982, which has been in the Städel collection since 2000.
Three closely interrelated works by the Expressionist artists Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938), Max Pechstein (1881–1955) and Erich Heckel (1883–1970) will also be assembled in the Modern Art gallery. The three bathing scenes were presumably executed in 1910 during a joint excursion to the Moritzburg Ponds near Dresden. Painted in a synchronous working process, they represent a kind of contest among equals in which each of the painters had a chance to measure his own potential against that of his colleagues. Kirchner’s version, later reworked, is on a canvas painted on both sides and was only discovered in 2010. Within the framework of the exhibition, the works are being shown together for the first time, thus offering a unique opportunity for what promises to be a suspenseful comparison between the protagonists of the Brücke group.

Dialogues in the Collection of Contemporary Art
By assembling the works Sex with Dumplings (1963) and Big Night Down the Drain (1962/63) (loans from private collections) with the painting Field (1962) from the Städel Museum holdings, the exhibition will present the early work of the painter Georg Baselitz (b. 1938) as an important window on the history of West German painting of the twentieth century. The three works to be shown within the framework of the “Masterworks in Dialogue” were all featured in Baselitz’s first solo exhibition in 1963. Owing to their radical painterly qualities they sparked a scandal that would prove legendary. The debate even took on a political dimension: works such as Big Night Down the Drain (1962/63) were confiscated. The ideological controversy over abstract versus representational painting in the young Federal German Republic culminated in Baselitz’s provocative compositions in which carnality took centre stage – both formally and with regard to content – and the sensitivities of the German post-war period seemed mirrored. A striking encounter with Georg Baselitz’s epoch-making early phase will here be made possible.
Another group of works to be placed on view in the Contemporary Art collection in the Städel’s anniversary year will address the topic of the museum as an institution. From the perspective of the photographer Thomas Struth (b. 1954), the museum is not just a place for the preservation of art but also one in which art is created. On the occasion of the bicentennial exhibition, the photo Louvre 3, Paris 1989 (1989) from the Städel holdings will be joined by five further works (loans from the Atelier Thomas Struth) from his Museum Photographs series photographed in the National Gallery in London, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and the Art Institute of Chicago. The series focusses on the visitors’ behaviour and their relationship to the art on exhibit. The spectrum of scenes ranges from the indifferent attitudes of tourist groups to the meditative immersion of an individual art viewer seen, for example in Kunsthistorisches Museum 3, Vienna of 1989. The juxtaposition makes the works’ serial character particularly evident.

Dialogues in the Department of Prints and Drawings
In the gallery of the Department of Prints and Drawings, the exhibition will bring together a number of outstanding drawings, paintings and prints. Among the encounters, for example, will be two works by Hendrick Goltzius (1558–1617), an engraver and draughtsman highly admired in the late sixteenth century – works that testify to the astounding development in Goltzius’s mastery of the drawing technique within just a few years. The virtuoso Portrait of Gillis van Breen drawn by Goltzius in coloured chalk in 1588 was already in the collection of the museum’s founder Johann Friedrich Städel. The Portrait of Giambologna from the Teylers Museum in Haarlem, executed three years later, provides evidence of the amazingly painterly effect Goltzius was capable of achieving with the sparsest of means.
Two graphic works by the exceptional artist Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) will likewise enter into dialogue. The artist made reference to his eventful and productive life with depictions of his alter ego: the Minotaur, which he staged in drawings and prints. He was captivated not so much by the myth as by the figure’s masculine creatureliness, which he conveyed now as brutish, libidinous, and powerful, now as tender and needy. The two prints from the Suite Vollard on view at the Städel will offer a superb illustration of the dichotomy between strength and weakness in Picasso’s Minotaur. In the Minotaur Caressing a Sleeping Woman of the year 1933, on loan from a private collection, the beast kneels before a peacefully slumbering female figure, bending his muscular body over her. The threatening look of the bull’s head contrasts with the disconcertingly gentle gesture with which he touches the woman’s hand. This work will be placed on display with the Blind Minotaur Being Led through the Night by a Young Girl (1934), a print from the Städel collection which, from the point of view of technique, is one of the artist’s most ambitious prints. Reminiscent of a theatre stage, the composition is borne by the contrast between light and dark.

200 Years Städel
The exhibition is one of the major events on the comprehensive anniversary programme in honour of the Städel bicentennial in 2015. On 15 March 1815, the Frankfurt banker and businessman Johann Friedrich Städel signed the final version of his will, thus bequeathing his wealth and art collection to a foundation that was to bear his name. Two-hundred years later, the Städel Museum is considered the oldest and most renowned museum foundation in Germany. The Old Masters, Modern Art and Contemporary Art collections as well as the Department of Prints and Drawings offer an overview of seven hundred years of European art from the early fourteenth century to the very present. The collection encompasses some 3,000 paintings, 600 sculptures, over 4,000 photographs and more than 100,000 drawings and prints. The Städel is celebrating its bicentennial with first-rate exhibition and research projects, major additions to its collection, and the large-scale expansion of its digital mediation programme.

LENDERS TO THE EXHIBITION
Lindenau-Museum, Altenburg; Musée de Picardie, Amiens, France; Atelier Thomas Struth, Berlin; Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin; Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin; Schlossmuseum, Braunfels; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Davids Samling, Copenhagen, Denmark; Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden; National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, Ireland; Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf; Freies Deutsches Hochstift / Frankfurter Goethe-Museum, Frankfurt am Main; Teylers Museum, Haarlem, Netherlands; Deichtorhallen Hamburg / Sammlung Falckenberg, Hamburg; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg; Klosterkammer Hannover / Ev. Damenstift Kloster Ebstorf; Ateneum Art Museum, Finnish National Gallery (Collection von Willebrand), Helsinki, Finland; Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe; Franz Marc Museum, Kochel am See; Hessische Hausstiftung, Kronberg im Taunus / Museum Schloss Fasanerie, Schloss Fasanerie; Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig, Leipzig; Tate, London, United Kingdom; The Fine Art Society Contemporary, London, United Kingdom; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, United Kingdom; Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain; Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich; Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau, Munich; Museo e Gallerie Nazionali di Capodimonte, Naples, Italy; Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Staatsgalerie Neuburg an der Donau, Neuburg an der Donau; Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France; Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck / Sammlung Rau für UNICEF, Remagen; Vatikanische Museen, Rome, Italy; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen, France; Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, Sweden; Mauritshuis, The Hague, Netherlands; Museum Sønderjylland – Kunstmuseet i Tønder, Tønder, Denmark; Albertina, Vienna, Austria; Muntean / Rosenblum & Georg Kargl Fine Arts, Vienna, Austria; National Gallery of Art, Washington, USA; Goethe-Nationalmuseum, Klassik Stiftung Weimar, Weimar; Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Winterthur, Switzerland; Martin von Wagner-Museum der Universität Würzburg, Würzburg; Friedrich Christian Flick Collection; Merzbacher Kunststiftung; Sammlung Prof. Dr A.-W. Scheer and private lenders who wish to remain anonymous

MASTERWORKS IN DIALOGUE. EMINENT GUESTS FOR THE ANNIVERSARY

Curators: Dr Bastian Eclercy, Dr Martin Engler, Dr Felix Krämer, Prof Dr Jochen Sander, Dr Jutta Schütt, Dr Martin Sonnabend
Project supervision: Dr Eva Mongi-Vollmer, curator for special projects
Exhibition dates: 7 October 2015 to 24 January 2016
Press preview: Tuesday, 6 October 2015, 11 am

Information:www.staedelmuseum.de, info@staedelmuseum.de, phone +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, Sun, holidays 10:00 am ‒ 6:00 pm, Thu + Fri 10:00 am ‒ 9:00 pm
Special opening hours: 24 Dec. 2015 closed, 25, 26 and 28 Dec. 2015 10:00 am ‒ 6:00 pm, 31 Dec. 2015 closed, 1 Jan. 2016 11:00 am ‒ 6:00 pm, 4 Jan. 2016 10:00 am ‒ 6:00 pm

Admission: 14 EUR, reduced 12 EUR, family ticket 24 EUR; admission free for children to the age of 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

Catalogue: The exhibition will be accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue published by Wienand Verlag and edited by Max Hollein. With a foreword by Max Hollein and texts by Jana Baumann, Bastian Eclercy, Martin Engler, Anna Helfer, Felicity Korn, Felix Krämer, Kristina Lemke, Eva Mongi-Vollmer, Maureen Ogrocki, Susanne Pollack, Almut Pollmer-Schmidt, Annabel Ruckdeschel, Jochen Sander, Jutta Schütt, Martin Sonnabend, Fabian Wolf and Daniel Zamani,. In German and English, 280 pages, 34.90 EUR (museum edition)
Guide to the exhibition: An exhibition guide will be published in German, 40 pages, 7.50 EUR.
Digitorial: The digitorial is being made possible by the Aventis Foundation. Design and programming: Scholz & Volkmer. Available at: meisterwerke.staedelmuseum.de; online from early September 2015
Audio guide: The audio tour is being made available with support from the Georg und Franziska Speyer’sche Hochschulstiftung. German and English, 4 EUR, two audio guides for 7 EUR

Social Media: The Städel Museum is communicating the exhibition on the social media with the hashtags #dialogdermeisterwerke, #starstreffenstars and #200jahrestaedel.

General guided tours of the exhibition: Tue 3 pm, Thu 6 pm, Fri 7 pm, Sa 4 pm, Sun 11 am, also Fri 25 Dec. 2015 and Fri 1 Jan. 2016 3 pm, Sat 2 Jan. 2016 4 pm.
Tickets: 4 EUR in addition to the admission fee, available starting two hours before the tour begins (Sundays from 10 am at the Städel cashier’s desk). The number of participants is limited, previous booking is not required. Offer available online only: Admission + guided tour of the special exhibition 16 EUR (tickets.staedelmuseum.de)
Corporate Sponsor: DZ Bank
Funding from: Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain gGmbH, Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne, Kulturstiftung der Länder

Media partners: Deutschlandfunk, Deutschlandradio Kultur, Verkehrsgesellschaft Frankfurt am Main

By seating works from its collection “on the couch”, Frankfurt’s Städel Museum has produced a completely new web film format. Starting immediately, “Talk im Rahmen” (“Talk in Framework”) is available on the Städel Museum’s YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/staedelmuseum). As entertaining as it is informative and innovative, the new film series avails itself of the classical TV talk show format. The well-known TV host Gert Scobel (3sat) discusses selected topics with guests at the Städel. What makes this talk show different is: the studio guests are artworks from all areas of the museum’s collection. In approximately ten-minute episodes, “Old Masters” engage in heated discussion with works of modern and contemporary art. Voice-over artists lend the works fictive personalities and distinctive voices. The series parodies talk show clichés such as the classical studio with the water glass for the host and conservative furniture for the guests, or the stereotypical point-of-view shots that follow the conversation. The “Talk in Rahmen” (“Talk in Framework”) guests are introduced in short film clips in which the audience makes their acquaintance and learns who created them when and under what circumstances. By way of this information, but also the guests’ pointedly formulated remarks, the viewer learns about key aspects of all the participating artworks in a completely unconventional, innovative and entertaining manner.

In every episode, three paintings from various eras have been invited to talk about a topic they share – and often disagree on. The subject of emancipation, for example, is discussed by Lucas Cranach’s Venus (1532) as a “femme fatale” who makes deliberate use of her charms to reach her goals, Ottilie W. Roederstein’s Self-Portrait with Folded Arms (1926) as a work by a self-confident artist who knew how to hold her ground in the male-dominated art world of her time, and Carl Spitzweg’s The Widower (1844), who doesn’t think much of Roederstein’s plea for strong women. In this episode, Sonja Deutsch – British actress Helen Mirren’s ‘German voice’ – speaks the part of Ottilie W. Roederstein’s self-portrait.

The new web film format was produced by the Städel Museum and Readymade-Films of Berlin within the context of the Frankfurt museum’s digital expansion. The idea behind “Talk im Rahmen” (“Talk in Framework”) is based on the fact that the Städel Museum is currently developing completely new formats for various target groups and channels.

“Our new web film series ‘Talk im Rahmen’ (‘Talk in Framework’) is a fascinating new and completely unprecedented educational, entertainment and mediation format. Artworks that talk about the major issues of our time – that makes for an innovative, surprising and playful approach to the works in the Städel collection. Even more importantly, though, in a whole new way it brings out the controversial themes addressed by the works, and their continued relevance for us today. ‘Talk im Rahmen’ (‘Talk in Framework’) is a further fundamental element of our comprehensive digital museum-education initiative and, offered as a YouTube format, will appeal to entirely new target groups in addition to our already existing public”, explains Städel Museum director Max Hollein.

Talking about his experience during the show’s shooting, host Gert Scobel comments: “The ‘Talk im Rahmen’ (‘Talk in Framework’) project presented me with completely new challenges in my role as talk show host. Imagine you had to conduct an animated, controversial discussion with someone who simply didn’t answer and just sat there mutely. What’s worse, that person is not a person at all but a painting. Together, the film series’ producers and I have embarked on an exciting filmic experiment. We’ll find out from the public response whether or not it’s a success, and I can hardly wait. My hope is that this innovative new art format will be able to convey to its audience something of the experience of spending a long time in a room with the original paintings and actually trying to converse with them, something of the inimitable aura of an original.”

The Städel’s digital expansion The production of the new web film format is embedded in the Städel Museum’s digital expansion programme. The Städel, Germany’s oldest museum foundation, is taking its 200th birthday this year as an occasion for a fundamental redefinition of its diverse educational programme as well as the museum visitor’s experience. Against the background of the increasing digitalization of everyday life, the expansion of its educational responsibility into the digital realm is a key concern for the Frankfurt museum. Within the context of this digital expansion, one component is the substantial development of the Städel’s web film programme. In addition to already established formats such as classical exhibition films on special exhibitions, films about artists represented in the Städel collection, and event documentations, the museum is presently also producing additional formats to be released on Städel communication channels.

The host
Gert Scobel (b. Aachen 1959) leads the way through the format in the role of host. From 1995 to 2007, Scobel hosted the 3sat programme “Kulturzeit”. Since April 2008 he has presented “scobel”, which is broadcast weekly on 3sat. Having already been nominated for the Adolf Grimme Prize in 1999 and 2001, in 2005 he was awarded that distinction for his performance as host of “Kulturzeit” and “delta” and elected “culture journalist of the year” by “Medium Magazin”.

The topics and guests of the episodes

Is emancipation still up to date? – featuring:
Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553): Venus (1532)
Ottilie W. Roederstein (1859–1937): Self-Portrait with Folded Arms (1926)
Carl Spitzweg (1808–1885): The Widower (1844)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocSS_Km502U

I post, therefore I am – authenticity, selfies and the web – featuring:
Maria Lassnig (1919–2014): Self-Portrait with Monkey (2001)
Gerhard Hoehme (1920–1989): Zimbal (1966)
Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98–1543): Portrait of Simon George of Cornwall (ca. 1535–1540)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xcrma-9OLdU

TALK IM RAHMEN (TALK IN FRAMEWORK)

URL: www.youtube.de/staedelmuseum.de

Playlist with all episodes: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2P7h0ecB-f_SxBUagvb1NmegMIXv2EY8

Edited by: Städel Museum, Readymade-Films
Host: Gert Scobel
Sound track: Wolfram Gruss
Set construction: set:art GmbH
Production: www.readymade-films.com
Post-production: www.goodguys.de
Sound mixing: www.hofkapellmeister.com

Social media: The Städel Museum is communicating the web film series with the hashtags #TalkImRahmen and #staedel.

“200 Years Städel”, the bicentennial celebrations of Frankfurt’s Städel Museum, are culminating with a solo exhibition of works by the internationally renowned American artist John Baldessari (b. 1931) taking place from 5 November 2015 to 24 January 2016. For “John Baldessari. The Städel Paintings”, the artist – one of the most influential alive today – executed a total of sixteen new pieces related explicitly to the Städel Museum collection, which spans seven hundred years of European art. A number of very different works from the Städel holdings – masterpieces, but also unusual finds in the storage depots, by Lucas Cranach the Elder, Agnolo Bronzino, Dirck van Baburen, Bartolomeo Veneto, Justus Juncker, Erró, Maria Lassnig and others – served him as visual material for his large-scale collages. Taking these selected works as his point of departure, the artist explores the relationship between painting and photography, but also that between image and language. In the process he not only isolates specific details of the Städel paintings but also partially overpaints those details and combines them with texts formally reminiscent of excerpts from Hollywood film scripts to create large horizontally or vertically divided diptychs. The result is a suspenseful and complex consonance/dissonance that queries old and new art alike and breaks with established patterns of perception. The catalogue being published in German and English to accompany the show broadens the spectrum further and places Baldessari’s most recent workgroup in the context of the extremely diverse œuvre of this prominent pioneer of American concept art.

“I couldn’t imagine a better way of bringing the Städel’s two-hundredth anniversary year to a close. The fact that John Baldessari – a true icon of the contemporary art world – has devoted himself to our collection on such a profound level underscores the international appeal of the Städel and its programme. We are extremely proud to have this opportunity to show Baldessari’s new works at the Städel Museum”, comments Städel director Max Hollein.

It was in the late 1960s that John Baldessari (born in National City, California in 1931) began addressing himself to the conflation of image and text so characteristic of his art. In 1970 he decided to burn a substantial proportion of his œuvre ‒ all of the paintings in his possession executed between 1953 and 1966 ‒ in a symbolically charged action he titled the “Cremation Project”. What followed this radical gesture, however, was not the end of his artistic activity, but on the contrary a fresh start in his intense pictorial production. For his art Baldessari draws on contemporary American mass culture but also on the canon of art history. In his works he responds to artistic strategies of the Classical Modern period such as montage or the integration of everyday elements, and combines them with themes introduced by the post-war avant-gardes, for example the discourses on consumption or the media. He uses found footage from films and other mass media, which he combines anew and in part subjects to painterly processing. In addition to image and language, Baldessari also already began at an early stage to link painting and photography by experimenting with photo emulsion on canvas. With his interdisciplinary approach as well as his merging of widely differing motifs, media and materials, he creates entirely new contexts of meaning. Among other distinctions, John Baldessari has been awarded the Golden Lion of the 53rd Venice Biennale and, in 2012, the Kaiserring, the art prize of the city of Goslar.

“Baldessari’s Städel Paintings bear witness to a sense of both respect and irony towards the history of painting, as well as to that different, better world promised us by painting over centuries – and at the same time they cannot but mistrust that promise”, observes Martin Engler, curator of the exhibition and head of the Städel Museum’s contemporary art collection.

With the workgroup of the sixteen diptychs to be shown at the Städel Museum in the framework of “John Baldessari: The Städel Paintings”, the artist negotiates fundamental issues related to the execution and reception, value and valuation of art. The collage Movie Scripts / Art: Hang in there (2014) shows a section of Agnolo Bronzino’s (1503–1572) Portrait of a Lady with a Lapdog (1537–1540), a key work of the Städel Museum’s Old Masters collection. Apart from the lady’s hands, all we see is part of the little dog sitting on her lap. Monochrome overpainting covers small areas, which thus represent an abstract counterpart to the illusionary space created by Bronzino’s composition. The brief text appearing underneath in screenplay style revolves around a fictional auction at Sotheby’s in New York. The two protagonists, Arthur and Hans, are sitting in the VIP lounge and competing for a work; Arthur has just bid 1.2 million dollars. Hans hesitates for a moment and asks the person accompanying him for advice. She reminds him that he already owns a yacht in which he could hang the painting.
For Movie Scripts / Art: I wouldn’t even try (2014) Baldessari used a fragment from Ideal Portrait of a Courtesan as Flora (ca. 1520) by Bartolomeo Veneto (1502–1531). The film script text in the left-hand half of the picture is about a couple travelling by car in the vicinity of Albuquerque, New Mexico. They drive towards a huge billboard. The short description of the image on the billboard seems to be directly related to a detail of the Veneto work. In the conversation, the woman in the car remarks that she wishes she could also paint like that, but she wouldn’t even dare to try. The man replies outright: “I’m thinking about it, baby!” Clichés about art, quality and craftsmanship here encounter a symbol of everyday American culture and the widespread assumption that art is based solely on expertise and artistic skill.

Like these two works, the entire series takes a critical and pointed look at the institutions and mechanisms of the ‘art operating system’. In the process, it reflects on the complex and often absurd excesses in the contemporary art world and its market.

Edited by Martin Engler and published by the Hirmer Verlag, the catalogue accompanying the exhibition ‒ “John Baldessari: The Städel Paintings” ‒ places the series on view in the Städel in the context of Baldessari’s overall multifaceted œuvre while at the same time shedding light on decisive art-historical and institutional references. The publication introduces this outstanding exponent of concept and media art as a key figure representing an important chapter in recent art history.

With this show of current works by John Baldessari based on the Städel collection, the Frankfurt museum is also inquiring into the present status of painting. At the end of its bicentennial year, the Städel – as a “painting museum” ‒ thus builds a bridge from the past to the immediate present and takes a suspenseful look ahead to the future.

John Baldessari. The Städel Paintings

Curator: Dr. Martin Engler (head of the collection of contemporary art, Städel Museum)
Exhibition dates: 5 November 2015 to 24 January 2016
Press preview: Wednesday, 4 November 2015, 11 am
Location: Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt

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

Opening hours: Tue, Wed, Sat, Sun 10 am ‒ 6 pm, Thu, Fri 10 am ‒ 9 pm, closed Mondays
Special opening hours: 3 Oct. 2015, 10 am – 6 pm, 24 Dec. 2015 closed, 25, 26 and 28 Dec. 2015 10 am ‒ 6 pm, 31 Dec. 2015 closed, 1 Jan. 2016 11 am ‒ 6 pm, 4 Jan. 2016 10 am ‒ 6 pm

Admission: 14 EUR, reduced 12 EUR, family ticket 24 EUR; admission free for children to the age of 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

Catalogue: The exhibition catalogue, published by Hirmer Verlag and edited by Martin Engler, contains contributions by Jana Baumann, Martin Engler, David Salle, Philipp Kaiser; German/English, 184 pp., approx. 35 EUR (museum edition).

Social media: The Städel Museum is communicating the exhibition on the social media with the hashtags #baldessari and #staedel.

General guided tours of the exhibition (included in admission fee): Thu 7 pm; Sun 2 pm
Special guided tours on request, please contact: +49(0)69-605098-200, info@staedelmuseum.de
Further events and activities: www.staedelmuseum.de

Media partners: Andy Warhol's INTERVIEW magazine, Verkehrsgesellschaft Frankfurt am Main

Exhibition Program

Maniera: Pontormo, Bronzino and Medici Florence
24 February to 5 June 2016
Exhibition annex
Jacopo Pontormo, Agnolo Bronzino, Andrea del Sarto, Rosso Fiorentino, Giorgio Vasari – in 2016, the Städel Museum will stage a major exhibition of superb works presenting the distinguished painters of Florentine Mannerism for the first time in Germany. With the aid of prominent loans, the show will acquaint the public with a key chapter in the history of Italian art in all its diversity. Spanning the period from the return of the Medici to Florence in 1512 and the initial artistic endeavours of the new generation around Pontormo and Rosso to the 1568 publication of Vasari’s Lives – artist biographies that still bear an influence today –, “Maniera” will be devoted to Florence as the first centre of European Mannerism. More than 120 precious loans, including paintings as well as drawings and sculptures, will provide an unprecedented overview of a stylistically formative epoch for which the art historiographer Giorgio Vasari coined the colourful term “maniera”. Elegant, cultivated and artificial, but also capricious, extravagant and sometimes even bizarre: the art of Mannerism exhibits many facets. In 1967, the art historian John Shearman summed it up in a catchy formula – "the stylish style". Its sophisticated grace and creative tenacity make the “maniera” one of the most fascinating phenomena in the art of Italy.
One of the most exquisite works in the Städel holdings – Bronzino’s famous Portrait of a Lady in Red (Francesca Salviati?) (ca. 1533) – formed the point of departure for this ambitious show. The project is being carried out with special support from the museums of Florence, above all the Uffizi, the Galleria dell’Accademia and the Galleria Palatina. Further key loans will come from such prominent museums as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Paris Louvre, the Prado and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, the Szépművészeti Múzeum in Budapest and the Brera in Milan.
The art-historical development of the decades from 1512 to 1568 will be presented in close relation to Florentine city history and Medici rule – themes to be investigated in both the exhibition and the accompanying catalogue.
Curator: Dr. Bastian Eclercy

Sigmar Polke: Early Prints
2 March to 22 May 2016
Exhibition gallery of the Department of Prints and Drawings
The printed image, circulated by the mass media or photographically staged by the artist himself, represents a fundamental principle in the work of Sigmar Polke (1941–2010). As early as 1967, towards the end of his studies at the Düsseldorf art academy, Polke published his first print: Girlfriends. To this end he chose offset printing, a rather unsophisticated technique in terms of craftsmanship, and trivial from the artistic point of view. It would remain his favourite printmaking medium, which he would use to transport and disseminate seemingly incidental – but nonetheless disconcerting – commentaries on art and society.
The presentation in the exhibition gallery of the Department of Prints and Drawings will feature a selection of Sigmar Polke’s early prints as precious as it is concentrated, and inquire into the special quality of his work with the medium. Thanks to the Deutsche Bank Collection at the Städel Museum, the exhibits can be chosen entirely from within the Städel’s own holdings.
Curator: Dr. Jutta Schütt

Heaven on Display: The Altenberg Altar and Its Imagery
22 June to 25 September 2016
Exhibition gallery of the Department of Prints and Drawings
Owing to fortunate circumstances, a unique ensemble of late thirteenth and early fourteenth-century liturgical and paraliturgical objects has come down to us from a former convent at Altenberg an der Lahn. Every one of these objects alone can already be considered among the absolute gems of the period. For the first time since the convent’s secularization in the early nineteenth century, they will now be brought together again in the exhibition “Heaven on Display”, granting visitors the opportunity to experience one of the qualitatively most superb choir ensembles of the Middle Ages.
At its centre, the exhibition will feature a folding altarpiece measuring some 4.9 metres in width. Consisting of a shrine cabinet, a statue of the Madonna and wings, it unites works of painting, sculpture, textile art and goldsmithery in a complex inter-referential system of altar imagery. From about 1330 onward, this retable, which forms the core of the ensemble, decorated the main altar of the convent church built between 1260 and 1270. The altarpiece wings already entered the Städel collection and its superb holdings of Early German painting in 1925. The presentation in the exhibition gallery of the Department of Prints and Drawings will allow visitors to experience first-hand the fascinating interplay between various pictorial media in an ensemble of early fourteenth-century choir furnishings. Within this context, particularly in view of the sophisticated iconography of the linen embroideries and the recently rediscovered original paintings on the sides and back of the shrine cabinet, questions arise as to the accessibility of the imagery on and around the high altar and its reception from close quarters.
In preparation for the exhibition, the Städel is hosting an international Passavant Colloquium on 13 and 14 November 2015. The latest research insights will be presented by altogether seventeen guest speakers, whose contributions will be further elaborated within the framework of the exhibition “Heaven on Display: The Altenberg Altar and Its Imagery”.
Curator: Prof. Dr. Jochen Sander

Georg Baselitz – The Heroes
30 June to 23 October 2016
Exhibition annex
Georg Baselitz (b. 1938) is without question one of the most influential painters and sculptors of our time. In 1965/66, in a virtually explosive spurt of productivity, he developed his dramatic and paradoxical Hero paintings. The forceful workgroup of the Heroes and New Types is today regarded worldwide as a key example of the German art of the 1960s. In the summer of 2016, in a monographic exhibition curated by Städel director Max Hollein, it will be comprehensively presented for the first time. Some seventy paintings and works on paper will be on view, distinguished by aggressively and defiantly painted monumental figures that have lost nothing of their ambiguous, portentous and vulnerable quality to this day.
In 1965, Georg Baselitz perceived the order of post-war Germany in its state of multifaceted destruction – ideologies and political systems, but also artistic styles were up for discussion. This lack of order was very much in keeping with the artist’s own nature: appropriation through artistic categorization was something that remained foreign to him all his life. From the perspective of his fundamentally sceptical attitude he therefore emphasized the equivocal aspects of his time. His monumental Heroes in their tattered battle dress, figures marked as much by failure as they are by resignation, possess an accordingly contradictory character. The fact that the artist – who was a mere twenty-seven years of age at the time – devoted himself to the subject of "heroes" or "types" at all was provocative per se. (Male) heroism and its onetime exponents had been called into question by the war and the post-war period. The fragile and paradoxical character of the Heroes with regard to content finds its equivalent in their form. The consistently frontal depiction and central placement of the clearly outlined figure contrast with the wildness of the palette and the vehemence of the painting style. Baselitz thus illustrated a reality unwelcome in the German Federal Republican success story of the economic miracle – and what is more, to do so he availed himself of figuration, a supposedly obsolete form.
Yet Baselitz was concerned here with far more than general social issues – he was also reflecting on his own position in relation to society. The result is a forceful assertion of the self and definition of identity that runs contrary to all of the currents of the period in question.
The travelling exhibition’s subsequent venues will be the Moderna Museet Stockholm, the Palazzo delle Esposizioni Rom and the Museo Guggenheim Bilbao.
Curator: Max Hollein
Co-curator: Dr. Eva Mongi-Vollmer

David Claerbout. Die reine Notwendigkeit
28 September to 23 October 2016
Städel Garden
From 28 September to 23 October 2016 – on the occasion of the Frankfurt Book Fair, whose guests of honour will be the Netherlands and Flanders – the Städel will present a new work by the Belgian artist David Claerbout (b. 1969) within the framework of the series “In the Städel Garden”. At first sight, the sixty-minute video Die reine Notwendigkeit developed especially for the Städel Museum looks like a direct appropriation of the popular animated film The Jungle Book by Wolfgang Reithermann from 1967. For his work, Claerbout had the drawings re-created in an elaborate process – the major difference being that he eliminated the humanized character of the familiar animals the Bear, the Panther, the Snake, the Tiger etc. and therefore all narrative thread. They now move through the jungle like members of their species in an animal documentary, undisturbed by humanity’s stories. Rather than telling the tale of a young boy, the video culminates every hour on the hour in the final scene of the 1967 original: the singing girl who has come to the jungle to fetch water. For Claerbout, this scene serves as the beginning and end of the loop dividing time into one-hour units on a large LED screen in the Städel Garden. In his photographic and filmic installations, David Claerbout employs visual material ranging from found historical photographs and reconstructed images to films shot according to his instructions. He processes this material digitally in such a way that the boundary between photography and film becomes fluid. Claerbout deconstructs linear courses of time, thus inquiring into how we tell stories with images.
Curator: Dr. Martin Engler

Antoine Watteau. The Draughtsman
19 October 2016 to 15 January 2017
Exhibition gallery of the Department of Prints and Drawings
The French painter Antoine Watteau (1684–1721) is among the great masters of draughtsmanship. His sensitive studies in red, black and white chalk capture female and male models, observations of details and spontaneous ideas, and develop that world of cheerful companies and mutually attentive conviviality that would come to be called “fêtes galantes” (“courtship parties”).
In cooperation with the Teylers Museum in Haarlem, the Städel Museum is planning an exhibition of drawings by Antoine Watteau for the autumn of 2016. Both institutions have in their possession substantial holdings of works by the artist, who can be considered one of the most outstanding draughtsmen in the history of French art. His innovative style – characterized by a combination of spontaneity, ease and intimacy on the one hand and observation of the utmost precision on the other – contrasts starkly with the formal tradition of the academically oriented artists of his time. With its psychological sensitivity, the new, virtuoso art reflects the spirit of the dawning Enlightenment.
Watteau is relatively little known in Germany, despite the fact that in the eighteenth century he was one of the Frederick the Great’s favourite artists. The last exhibition to be devoted here to Watteau took place in 1984. Among the works in the Städel Museum’s painting collection is the earliest version of the Embarkation for Cythera, which – owing in part to the two further versions in the Louvre and Charlottenburg Palace – represents what is presumably the artist’s most famous pictorial invention. Enhanced by a small selection of further paintings, the Städel Museum’s Embarkation for Cythera will form the core of the presentation of approximately fifty choice drawings from the holdings of the participating institutions as well as a number of other prominent German, Dutch and French collections. Approximately twenty drawings by such artists as François Boucher, Nicolas Lancret or Jean-Honoré Fragonard will supplement this selection, bearing testimony to Watteau’s impact on later generations of artists.
Following its presentation at the Städel Museum, the exhibition will be shown at the Teylers Museum in Haarlem from 2 February to 14 May 2017.
Curator: Dr. Martin Sonnabend

Battle of the Sexes: From Franz von Stuck to Frida Kahlo
24 November 2016 to 19 March 2017
Exhibition annex
The exhibition “Battle of the Sexes: From Franz von Stuck to Frida Kahlo” will shed light on the artistic investigation of gender roles from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of World War II. The traditional definition of male and female as active/passive, rational/emotional, culture/nature was heavily debated in modern art: many artists presented their viewers with overstated gender characteristics and cemented stereotypical role models in their works. Others challenged established clichés and endeavoured to subvert them with strategies such as irony, exaggeration, masquerade and blending. Featuring a selection of some 150 works of painting, sculpture, graphic art, photography and film, the large-scale exhibition project aims to single out the especially concise artistic positions and open up a dialogue between them.
The show will draw from the Städel Museum holdings which – with paintings by Max Liebermann, Edvard Munch and Franz von Stuck, sculptures by Auguste Rodin and photographs by Frank Eugene, Man Ray and others – include important works on the subject. With the additional aid of important loans, the presentation will place works by well-known names in art history – for example Hannah Höch, Édouard Manet, Gustav Klimt, Otto Dix or Frida Kahlo – side by side with discoveries that expand the canon with the strong outlooks of such artists as Leonor Fini, John Collier or Gustav Adolf Mossa. Against the background of the intense discussion on the topic and the constantly evolving roles of woman and man, the project will offer insights into the complexity of gender issues and shed light on the art historical dimension of a highly relevant socio-politic subject.
Curators: Felicity Korn, Dr. Felix Krämer

Subject to alterations.

The Städel Museum will usher in the coming exhibition year with a high-calibre show: starting on 24 February 2016, the Frankfurt museum will present "Maniera. Pontormo, Bronzino and Medici Florence". With the aid of some 120 prominent loans, the exhibition will acquaint the German public with a key chapter in the history of Italian art – Florentine Mannerism – in all its diversity for the first time. Works by Jacopo Pontormo, Agnolo Bronzino, Andrea del Sarto, Rosso Fiorentino, Giorgio Vasari and others will be on view. Chronologically and topographically, the show will pick up where the successful Städel exhibition "Botticelli. Likeness, Myth, Devotion" of 2009/10 left off. Advance ticket sales have already begun. Flexible "Early-Bird-Tickets", redeemable at the holder’s convenience, can be booked online at a preferential price of 10 EUR starting immediately.

The exhibition is being realized with support from the Savings Banks Finance Group and the Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain.

Devoted to Florence as the first centre of European Mannerism, the large-scale special exhibition will cover the period from the return of the Medici to that city in 1512 and the early artistic forays by the new generation around Pontormo and Rosso to the 1568 publication of the second edition of Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists a work still influential today. More than fifty paintings, but also over fifty drawings and eight sculptures will offer an experience hitherto possible only in Florence – a broad survey of a stylistically formative epoch characterized by the art historiographer Giorgio Vasari with the colourful term "maniera". One of the most exquisite works in the Städel holdings – Bronzino’s famous Portrait of a Lady in Red (Francesca Salviati?) (ca. 1533) – formed the point of departure for this show. The project is being carried out with special support from the museums of Florence, above all the Uffizi, the Galleria dell’Accademia and the Galleria Palatina, which are all contributing exceptional selections of works. Further key loans will come from such prominent institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Paris Louvre, the Prado and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, the Szépművészeti Múzeum in Budapest and the Brera in Milan.

Owing in great part to Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael, the High Renaissance of the early sixteenth century is generally considered a zenith in the development of art in Italy. In altogether eight chapters with differing temporal and thematic emphases, the Städel Museum exhibition will now impressively demonstrate that a number of especially outstanding artistic accomplishments can be attributed to the following two generations of artists. The art of Mannerism has many facets: it is elegant, cultivated and artificial, but also capricious, extravagant and sometimes even bizarre. Sophisticated elegance and creative eccentricity characterize the painting of the "maniera" as one of the most fascinating phenomena in Italian art. Building on the trailblazing Florentine presentations "L’officina della maniera" (1996/97), "Bronzino. Pittore e poeta alla corte dei Medici" (2010/11) and "Pontormo e Rosso Fiorentino. Divergenti vie della ‘maniera’" (2014), the Städel Museum’s comprehensive special exhibition will present a broad survey of Mannerist painting in Florence within the context of various genres and the city’s history.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue published by the Prestel Verlag and edited by Bastian Eclercy, with a foreword by Max Hollein and texts by Hans Aurenhammer, Nicholas Scott Baker, Katharina Bedenbender, Anne Bloemacher, Gerd Blum, Ralf Bormann, Matteo Burioni, Heiko Damm, Bastian Eclercy, Chris Fischer, David Franklin, Dennis Geronimus, Sefy Hendler, Theresa Holler, Heidi J. Hornik, Fabian Jonietz, Adela Kutschke, Johannes Myssok, Susanne Pollack, Susanne Thürigen and Linda Wolk-Simon. In German and English, 304 pages, 39.90 EUR (museum edition).

MANIERA. PONTORMO, BRONZINO AND MEDICI FLORENCE

Curator: Dr Bastian Eclercy, head of the collection of Italian, French and Spanish paintings before 1800, Städel Museum.
Exhibition dates: 24 February to 5 June 2016.
Press preview: Tuesday, 23 February 2016, 11 am.
Location: Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt am Main.

Information: www.staedelmuseum.de, info@staedelmuseum.de, telephone +49(0)69-605098-0, fax +49(0)69-605098-111.
Visitor services: telephone +49(0)69-605098-232, besucherdienst@staedelmuseum.de.
Opening hours: Tue, Wed, Sat, Sun + holidays 10am ‒ 6 pm, Thu, Fri 10 am ‒ 9 pm.
Special opening hours: 25, 27 and 28 Mar. 10 am ‒ 6 pm, 1 May closed, 5, 15, 16 and 17 May 10 am ‒ 6 pm, 26 May 10 am ‒ 6 pm.

Admission: 14 EUR, reduced 12 EUR, family ticket 24 EUR; admission free for children to the age of 12; combi-price admission + guided tour 16 EUR (available online only); 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.
Early-Bird-Ticket: The first 1,000 online tickets are available at a preferential price of 10 EUR instead of the regular 14 EUR at tickets.staedelmuseum.de.
Advance ticket sales online at: tickets.staedelmuseum.de.

Catalogue: The exhibition will be accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue published by the Prestel Verlag and edited by Bastian Eclercy, with a foreword by Max Hollein and contributions by Hans Aurenhammer, Nicholas Scott Baker, Katharina Bedenbender, Anne Bloemacher, Gerd Blum, Ralf Bormann, Matteo Burioni, Heiko Damm, Bastian Eclercy, Chris Fischer, David Franklin, Dennis Geronimus, Sefy Hendler, Theresa Holler, Heidi J. Hornik, Fabian Jonietz, Adela Kutschke, Johannes Myssok, Susanne Pollack, Susanne Thürigen and Linda Wolk-Simon. In German and English, 304 pages, 39.90 Euro (museum edition).
Visitor’s guide: A visitor’s guide will be available in German, 40 pages, 7.50 EUR.

Digitorial: The digitorial is being made possible by the Aventis Foundation. Design and programming: Scholz & Volkmer. It will be available from February 2016 at maniera.staedelmuseum.de.
Städel App: The Städel App is sponsored by the FAZIT-STIFTUNG. The app is optimized for Android and iOS smartphone. Starting on the first day of the exhibition, it will offer the audio tour of the show in the form of a smartphone download.
Audio guide: The audio tour is narrated by Giovanni di Lorenzo, chief editor of the ZEIT. German and English, 4 EUR, two audio guides for 7 EUR.
Social Media: The Städel Museum is communicating the exhibition on the social media with the hashtags #maniera and #staedel.

General guided tours of the exhibition: Tue 3 pm, Wed 1 pm, Thu 6 pm, Fri 7 pm, Sat 4 pm, Sun 11 am, Fri. 25 Mar., Mon. 28 Mar., Thu 5 May, Mon. 16 May, Thu 26 May 4 pm. Tickets for the general guided tours are available for 4 EUR starting two hours before the tour begins (Sundays from 10 am) at the Städel cashier’s desk, or in advance at a preferential price of 16 EUR (admission + guided tour) online at tickets.staedelmuseum.de. The number of participants is limited; previous booking is not required.

Sponsored by: Savings Banks Finance Group, represented by Sparkassen-Kulturfonds of the German Savings Banks Association, Deutsche Leasing and Frankfurter Sparkasse;
Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain gGmbH.

Media partner: Verkehrsgesellschaft Frankfurt am Main
Mobility partner: Deutsche Bahn AG
Cultural partner: hr2-kultur