On April 21, our PI Dr. Andrea Meyer will be peaking together with Dr. Sabine Beneke at the symposium HALBwertZeit being organized by the Faculty of Design at the University of Applied Sciences Düsseldorf. Their lecture is entitled “Sicher gestellt, verwahrt und verwaltet: Zum Umgang mit den Sammlungen zeitgenössischer deutscher Kunst des ‘Dritten Reichs’” (Secured, Stored and Managed: Dealing with the Collections of Contemporary German Art of the “Third Reich”).
The symposium will be addressing the reasons and circumstances that lead to the assessment that a collection has “expired.” It will examine the discourses and measures that re-establish a collection’s relevance but also the circumstances that can prevent such a process from taking place and that subsequently lead to the division, dissolution, or destruction of a collection. The focus will be on both public and private collections. Specific examples from different areas will be presented in order to make it clear that collections are not closed entities. They are also subject to social change, which they document, illustrate, and reflect upon. The discussions accompanying the lectures will therefore also explore the question of how often entrenched collection structures can be broken up and how a living collection can emerge. The scholarly symposium is intended to open up perspectives and provide impulses for developing new approaches and pursuing innovative methos.
Further information and the program can be found here.