Berlin’s Georg Kolbe Museum, housed in the Bauhaus-era former studio home of the sculptor Georg Kolbe (1877-1947) and home to one of the most comprehensive artist’s estates of the 20th century, will continue in 2024 to examine the space between modern sculpture and expanded notions of the body in space. As an artist-centred and research-based institution, its 2024 program will be led by artists whose work in various mediums, across different geographies and time periods contribute to pressing questions of our time in conversations relating to the body, to sculpture, and the body’s relationship with the physical and natural world.
Lin May Saeed. The Snow Falls Slowly in Paradise. A Dialogue with Renée Sintenis
Until February 25, 2024
Seeing out the winter, this exhibition, developed in close collaboration with Lin May Saeed (1973-2023) before her passing, acts as a mirror for audiences to consider and reevaluate their relationships with the world’s non-human inhabitants. Rather than preaching, this exhibition, the most comprehensive showing of Lin May Saeed’s work until today, imagines a world in which human and non-human animals live in peaceful co-existence. The carefully selected works by modernist animal sculptor Renée Sintenis (1888-1965) bring a transhistorical perspective to the conversation.
Noa Eshkol. No Time to Dance
March 15–August 25, 2024
In the Spring, the Georg Kolbe Museum will present a retrospective of the work of composer, dancer and artist Noa Eshkol (1924–2007) on the occasion of what would have been her 100th birthday. The show explores both her extraordinary work in the field of movement notation and choreography, and her vibrant textile compositions. Contemporary responses from Yael Bartana, Omer Krieger, Sharon Lockhart, Janne-Camilla Lyster, and a newly commissioned work by Ayumi Paul traverse different perspectives on Eshkol’s legacy. Amplifying dance as a central theme of the museum’s collection, the exhibition will be accompanied by a collection display centred around dance during the Weimar Republic. A one-day online workshop will investigate the possibilities of the digital space for monographic artists’ estate and their mediation. On the opening weekend, KW on Location and the Georg Kolbe Museum will launch the republication of Eshkol’s 1958 Movement Notation.
Hoda Tawakol. ROOTS
May 25–October 13, 2024
Summer of 2024 will see the garden of the museum transform with a commission by Hoda Tawakol. Materialising in the form of a temporary pavilion, the newly developed outdoor space will engage with the museum’s unique sculpture garden through the lens of plants and identity. In her work, Tawakol mobilizes a recurring palm motif, which for her serves as instrument of investigation and exploration of themes like heritage, femininity, and motherhood.
Gisèle Vienne and the Puppets of the Avant-Garde
September 2024–March 2025
In collaboration with the Haus am Waldsee and the Sophiensäle Berlin, the museum will present the work of contemporary director, choreographer, puppeteer and visual artist Giséle Vienne. Her use of life-size puppets poses formal questions in the field of figurative sculpture and opens a decidedly political dimension in relation to the body as a place where culturally and socially constructed systems of perception can be questioned, criticised and possibly reversed. Vienne’s practice will enter conversations with artists of the historical avant-garde such as Hannah Höch, Maria Jarema, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Alexandra Exter, Claude Cahun and Emmy Hennings. These artists also employed puppets in their work as a medium for the renewal of the language of art and as a vehicle for political and social criticism.
The catalogue raisonné of Georg Kolbe’s sculptures will be made available online from early 2024.
The Georg Kolbe Museum receives its base funding from the Senate of Berlin and for its 2024 program is generously supported by:
