Diane Ar­bus, Walk­er Evans, Lee Fried­lan­der, Au­gust San­der, Ta­ta Ronkholz, Al­bert Renger-Patzsch, Pi­et Zwart, and twelve other pho­to­g­ra­phers all share a doc­u­men­tary and ar­tis­tic ap­proach, which will be pre­sent­ed and si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly ques­tioned in Do­ing the Doc­u­ment. Where does the doc­u­ment end and the ar­tis­tic ges­ture be­gin? This is a ques­tion that must be rene­go­ti­at­ed in th­ese post-fac­tu­al times amid the in­creas­ing aes­theti­ciza­tion of archi­val and doc­u­men­tary ma­te­rials in con­tem­po­rary art. The ex­hi­bi­tion is the re­sult of a do­na­tion of more than 200 works by Ger­man and Amer­i­can pho­to­g­ra­phers from the Barten­bach fam­i­ly of Cologne, which re­cent­ly ex­pand­ed our col­lec­tion con­sid­er­ab­ly.

Gabriele Mün­ter (1877–1962) was a cen­tral fig­ure of Ger­man Ex­pres­sion­ism and the artist group Der Blaue Re­it­er, which was found­ed at Mün­ter’s house in Mur­nau. Her role as a ded­i­cat­ed pro­po­nent, me­di­a­tor, and long­time com­panion of Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky is well known and rec­og­nized. This ex­hi­bi­tion de­mon­s­trates Gabriele Mün­ter’s im­por­tance and in­de­pen­dence as a pain­ter: with more than one hun­dred paint­in­gs, in­clud­ing works from her es­tate that will be pre­sent­ed to the public for the first time, it will of­fer a new look at this strong artist. Mün­ter is one of the few wo­m­en who played an ear­ly role in de­vel­op­ing mod­er­nism. Her open­ness and willing­ness to ex­per­i­ment as a pain­ter, pho­to­g­ra­pher, and graph­ic artist will now be pre­sent­ed in de­tail for the first time.