2003

NDK-GDR-DDR
September 12, 2003 - November 30, 2003

This exhibition provides a view “from below” at a period in German history in which party politics played an important role in shaping and guiding every aspect of life including the “Altagskultur” i.e. the culture of everyday life. Politics framed all historical developments within GDR in which the state subsidized the prices of necessary goods, controlled job opportunities and qualifications, supported families and conducted very extended housing programs.

Everyday objects typical of East German industrial production of the time – household plastics, radio electronics, and so-called consumer goods necessary for living – were mass-produced for millions. The exhibition is designed to present objects of material culture which represent the period from 1950’s through the 1970’s in the former GDR. The exhibition is...

 
José Guadalupe Posada
July 11, 2003 - August 17, 2003

José Guadalupe Posada (Aguascalientes 1852) is one of the pillars in the history of Mexican graphics. He was born in the heart region of his country; being spiritually enriched by the popular culture, Posada knew how to interpret its sense and turn it into his own sui generis artistic expression.

As a faithful interpreter of his time and tradition, Posada´s graphic work is full of a sharp satyr, that captures the prehispanic cult of death. The representative Mesoamerican character becomes the hard core of his entire graphic work. Engraving was his technique, the satyr his way of working. Making justice and creating a certain consciousness of his people towards a visual culture were his objectives, so that everybody, even the illiterate, could understand what was happening around them. As a...

 
"05.03.1953."
March 5, 2003 - May 11, 2003

The exhibition focuses on Stalin`s death, the mourning ceremony, the funeral and the fate of Stalin`s remnants afterwards. The exhibition does not want to deal extensively with the Stalinist personal cult, it`s role in the Soviet political system, and it's visual representation (mass propaganda, socialist realist art, etc.). Our task is to reconstruct the long moment of the dictator`s death - from the official announcement of his physical collapse until the replacement of his embalmed corps from the mausoleum. Stalin was the ultimate embodiment of a regime in symbolic as well as in a physical sense. The exhibit aims at presenting and analysing the effect of the vanishing of his figure on the public, and also the problems his decease raised for the regime and for his successors.

Besides the usual historical sources, (press and...