On June 1, 2018, Kunsthalle Mannheim will celebrate the grand opening of its spectacular new building and the start of a year packed with outstanding exhibitions. A special exhibition of works by fine art photographer Jeff Wall and four exhibitions devoted to the institution’s internationally renowned collection will mark the start of a new era in the art museum’s history.
The large-scale exhibition Open (June 2, 2018 to 2020) organized by the Kunsthalle director Dr. Ulrike Lorenz and her curatorial team will captivate audiences, presenting works by internationally significant artists including James Turrell, William Kentridge, Alicja Kwade, and Anselm Kiefer. Rooms devoted to individual artists are nested in a new presentation of the renowned collection with unique and major works by artists ranging from Édouard Manet, to Max Beckmann, to Francis Bacon, and an extraordinary collection of sculptures by artists including Auguste Rodin, Umberto Boccioni, Alberto Giacometti, and Thomas Hirschhorn.
In tandem, Memories: From the Institution’s History (June 2, 2018 to 2020) will present a piece of the Kunsthalle’s acquisitions history and illuminate the role of the Mannheim museum in the contemporary art discourse. Kunsthalle Mannheim made art history with exhibitions such as New Objectivity (1925), A New Direction in Painting (1957), and The Excluded Human (1975). These pioneering exhibitions involved major acquisitions for the Mannheim-based collection. Past exhibition themes thus continue to define specific focal points in today’s collection, which include the 1920s objective paintings and the so-called informel abstract paintings of the 1950s.
The first major special exhibition in the new Kunsthalle Mannheim is dedicated to the international photo artist Jeff Wall (b. 1946) (June 2 to September 9, 2018). His large-format back-lit cibachrome photographs resemble meticulously composed film stills. The Kunsthalle Mannheim exhibition focuses on his Constellations, which present the medium of photography in the form of a search for traces. His color C-prints form the third central group of works to be exhibited, alongside his back-lit photographs and his black-and-white photographs.
The exhibition (Re-)discoveries: The Kunsthalle Mannheim between 1933 and 1945 and Its Consequences (June 2, 2018 to 2020) debuts with the museum’s opening. This permanent exhibition illustrates the effects that the National Socialist era had and continues to have on the Kunsthalle Mannheim, its collection, and the individuals linked to the museum. One focus is the permanent loss of over five hundred works suffered by the museum in 1937 due to the confiscation of “degenerate art.” The exhibition also examines the propaganda exhibition mounted by the Kunsthalle Mannheim in 1933, at the beginning of the National Socialists’ smear campaign against the modern avant-garde.
An exhibition devoted to the prints and graphics of Carl Kuntz (June 2 to September 2, 2018) celebrates the works of this Mannheim-based painter. His graphic works bear the museum’s first inventory numbers and were a founding stone in the institution’s collection. The most significant works from his estate will be presented in their freshly restored state.
In October, the second major special exhibition The Construction of the World: Art and Economics (October 12, 2018 to February 3, 2019) will follow. Ten years ago the global financial crisis reached its high point: It rocked the economic foundations of America and Europe and continues to affect the present day. This thematic exhibition makes clear the dramatic impact of economics on art in an international comparative study and contrasts two epochs. The economic events of the era of classical modernism in the 1920s and 30s in Germany, Russia, and the United States are read against our present day. The exhibition is generously supported by Kulturstiftung des Bundes, Berlin.
