Be­tye Saar will be award­ed the twen­ty-sixth Wolf­gang Hahn Prize from the Ge­sellschaft für Mod­erne Kunst. This recog­ni­tion of the artist, who was born in Los An­ge­les in 1926 and is still lit­tle known in Ger­many, is high­ly time­ly, the ju­ry con­sist­ing of Yil­maz Dziewior, di­rec­tor of the Mu­se­um Lud­wig; Chris­tophe Ch­er­ix, Robert Leh­man Foun­da­tion chief cu­ra­tor of draw­in­gs and prints at the Mu­se­um of Mod­ern Art (Mo­MA) in New York; and the board mem­bers of the as­so­ci­a­tion de­cid­ed. Be­tye Saar has been cre­at­ing as­sem­blages from a wide va­ri­e­ty of found ob­jects, which she com­bines with draw­ing, prints, paint­ing, and pho­tog­ra­phy. Guest ju­ror Chris­tophe Ch­er­ix on Be­tye Saar: “Be­tye Saar’s work oc­cu­pies a piv­o­tal po­si­tion in Amer­i­can art. Her as­sem­blages from the 1960s and ear­ly 1970s in­ter­weave is­sues of race, politics, and su­per­na­t­u­ral be­lief sys­tems with her per­so­n­al his­to­ry. Hav­ing grown up in a ra­cial­ly se­g­re­gat­ed so­ci­e­ty, Saar has long held that art can tran­s­cend our dark­est mo­ments and deep­est fears. To­day, the emer­gence of a new gen­er­a­tion of artists min­ing her poig­nant le­ga­cy attests to how pro­found­ly Saar has changed the course of Amer­i­can art. The 2020 Wolf­gang Hahn Prize not on­ly ac­knowl­edges her ex­traor­d­i­nary achieve­ments and in­fluence, but al­so rec­og­nizes the need to re­vis­it how the his­to­ry of art in re­cent de­cades has been writ­ten.”

#M­Lx­Be­tye­Saar #WH­P2020

Equal­i­ty, in­dige­nous self-de­ter­mi­na­tion, wo­m­en’s rights, and Black Pow­er: the ex­hi­bi­tion Map­ping the Col­lec­tion takes a close look at the 1960s and 1970s in the Unit­ed States. It asks how artists have re­act­ed to the so­cial de­vel­op­ments and up­hea­vals of th­ese de­cades—and, con­verse­ly, what ideas about art from this time have shaped our me­m­o­ry. What im­age of Amer­i­ca is rep­re­sent­ed here? What part did in­dige­nous artists, fe­male artists, queer po­si­tions, and artists of col­or play in the de­vel­op­ment of art dur­ing this time?

Cu­ra­tor: Jan­ice Mitchell
#map­pingthe­col­lec­tion

Af­ter a long pe­ri­od dur­ing which the sub­ject was ta­boo, an in­creas­ing num­ber of mu­se­ums are open­ing up to a trans­par­ent ac­count­ing of coun­ter­feit works, exchang­ing in­sights, and, if ne­ces­sary, writ­ing off works from their col­lec­tions. With a con­cen­trat­ed stu­dio ex­hi­bi­tion, the Mu­se­um Lud­wig is al­so pos­ing ques­tions about au­then­tic­i­ty us­ing the ex­am­ple of the Rus­sian avant-garde. In ad­di­tion to Pop Art and Pi­cas­so, this is one of the fo­cus­es of the mu­se­um’s col­lec­tion, with more than 800 works from the pe­ri­od be­tween 1905 and 1930, in­clud­ing some 100 paint­in­gs. For vari­ous rea­sons, works of ques­tion­able au­thor­ship have cont­in­u­al­ly found their way in­to pri­vate and in­sti­tu­tio­n­al col­lec­tions. The Mu­se­um Lud­wig is al­so af­fect­ed and is cur­rent­ly in­vesti­gat­ing its col­lec­tion with the help of in­ter­na­tio­n­al scho­lars. The ex­hi­bi­tion will pre­sent the ini­tial find­in­gs as well as art-his­tor­i­cal and tech­no­log­i­cal meth­ods for mak­ing ar­tis­tic au­thor­ship or false at­tri­bu­tions rec­og­niz­able, with works by Na­talia Goncharo­va, Kli­ment Red­ko, Niko­lai Suetin, and other artists.

Cu­ra­tors: Ri­ta Ker­st­ing and Pe­tra Mandt
#o­rig­i­na­land­fake

The ruins of the Acrop­o­lis ap­pear to stand si­lent­ly in Fe­lix Alex­an­der Op­pen­heim’s pho­to­graphs: no peo­ple are vis­i­ble. In 1854 the large-for­mat pic­ture book “A­the­nien­sische Al­terthümer” was pub­lished, of which the Mu­se­um Lud­wig holds one of two sur­viv­ing copies. The much-cit­ed “si­lent gran­deur” of the an­cient relics, as cap­tured by Op­pen­heim, does not ob­s­cure the traces of loot­ing and de­struc­tion, as well as archae­o­log­i­cal re­cov­ery. For in­s­tance, in his in­tro­duc­to­ry texts Op­pen­heim speaks of the “great mas­tery” of the an­cient sculp­tures, while al­so cit­ing “rum­mag­ing in for­eign coun­tries” and the “ab­duc­tion” of sculp­tures. Now the en­tire al­bum will be ex­hi­b­it­ed for the first time, thus re­veal­ing a mo­ment in his­to­ry when the en­thu­si­asm for an­tiqui­ty, ear­ly arche­ol­o­gy, the politics of sym­bols in Greece, and the strug­gle for right­ful own­er­ship cre­at­ed a con­text rich in words and im­ages for th­ese si­lent ruins.

Cu­ra­tor: Miri­am Szwast
#M­Lx­Op­pen­heim #si­len­truins

The Mu­se­um Lud­wig is pre­sent­ing eleven works from the se­ries "Ruhr Land­s­capes" by Joachim Brohm (*1955), pho­to­graphed be­tween 1981 and 1983. In this ear­ly se­ries, Brohm al­ready shows his in­de­pen­dent pho­to­graph­ic po­si­tion, with which he opens up a new view of the re­gion be­yond the wide­spread stereo­typ­i­cal de­pic­tions of the Ruhr.

Brohm, who studied vi­su­al com­mu­ni­ca­tions at the Folk­wangschule in Es­sen from 1977 to 1983, saw th­ese sub­jects as a doc­u­men­ta­tion of “the com­bi­na­tion of lei­sure of­fer­in­gs and the lei­sure in­dus­try.” He was in­spired by the new Amer­i­can doc­u­men­tary pho­tog­ra­phy, which no longer de­pict­ed hero­ic ci­ties or sublime na­t­u­ral land­s­capes, but gas sta­tions, park­ing lots, sub­ur­ban neigh­bor­hoods, mo­tels, and busi­ness parks in a na­t­u­ral land­s­cape changed by hu­man be­in­gs

Cu­ra­tor: Bar­bara En­gel­bach
#M­LxJoachim­Brohm #Ruhr­land­schaften

Em­press Elis­a­beth of Aus­tria-Hun­gary, called Sisi, col­lect­ed pho­to­graphs in the 1860s, but kept them pri­vate through­out her life. To­day the Mu­se­um Lud­wig holds eigh­teen of her al­bums with some 2000 pho­to­graphs. They show the no­bil­i­ty—­many of them mem­bers of Sisi’s fam­i­ly—as well as cele­bri­ties and art­works. The most renowned are from her “al­bums of beau­ties,” high­ly staged por­traits of other wo­m­en. Sisi used th­ese pho­to­graphs to shape her own im­age dur­ing her months-long stays in Venice, Madei­ra, and Cor­fu. In th­ese years she ma­tured in­to a more en­er­get­ic, self-con­fi­dent fig­ure whose beau­ty be­came le­g­endary. In the late 1860s, at the age of 31, Sisi de­cid­ed not to be pho­to­graphed any­more. The pre­sen­ta­tion out­lines the con­nec­tions be­tween her al­most ob­ses­sive col­lect­ing of por­traits of wo­m­en and the im­age of her­self that she cre­at­ed.

Cu­ra­tor: Miri­am Szwast
#M­Lx­Sisi