EVENT DETAILS

Guest Speaker Professor Helmut Schneider on "Goethe's Concept of Art Collections and the Museum in the Context of Modernity (1798 until 1817)"

In the years following Napoleon’s final defeat in 1815, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, not only an intimate art connoisseur but passionate art collector, occupied himself with various projects of public collections. The historical background was the envisioned restoration of the—often sacral--art works, pillaged by Napoleon’s armies and brought to Paris (where they were exhibited in the Louvre), to their original locations. Goethe decided against a central German (Prussian) institution, pleading instead for a decentralized plurality of museums linked by a „web “ of intense exchange of visitors and ideas. The formula of „geistiger Kunstverkehr“, „intellectual“ or even „spiritual art communication“ oder „communication through art“, points back to Goethe’s earlier lament about the „tearing apart of the beautiful Italian art body“ in the wake of the Napoleonic pillages there in 1797. The evolution of the new concept of the museum as a place, or rather many places, of mutual exchange anticipates modern and contemporary ideas of the institution, distinct from the older, 19th century museum concept as an imperialist or colonialist showcase.

Following the talk, a reception will be held.