2009 - Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden

Research project “Pictorial Atlas: Art in the GDR”:
Kurt Dornis, “Zweite Schicht” (Second Shift), 1986,
Galerie Neue Meister and ...
took place in Moscow at the initiative of the “Art Transfer”
project. The conference, which was held at the German
Historical Institute in Moscow in association with both
that institute and various Russian partners such as the
State Hermitage and the Russian Museum Alliance, had
as its title “Trophäen – Verluste – Äquivalente” (Trophies
– Losses – Equivalents).
It was the first time that a museum from Germany had
held a conference in Moscow and it was the first time that
attention was directed not towards German war losses but
rather towards the enormous damage and losses suffered
by Russian museums and other cultural institutions during
the Second World War. The high level of public interest and
the large number of participants from both Russia and
Germany proved the necessity of shifting the focus onto
Russian war losses. This conference was only intended as
a first step, to be followed by further activities, in particular
dialogue between German and Russian museum specialists.
An exchange programme which has emerged out of the
“Art Transfer” project and has already become a regular
event is the exchange of paintings between the Pushkin
Museum and the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister. Alternately,
a painting from each museum is displayed in the
partner institution. At the end of 2009 it was the turn of
the Moscow museum’s “Stroganoff Madonna” by the
Italian Mannerist painter Angelo Bronzino to be exhibited
in Dresden.
EXAMPLE: “GDR ARt
I N tH E StOREROOM”
... Wolfgang Mattheuer, “Die Flucht des
Sisyphos” (The Flight of Sisyphus), 1972,
Galerie Neue Meister
Thanks not least to an initiative by the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen
Dresden, the Federal Ministry for Education
and Research launched a funding programme focusing on
the “recovery”, investigation and public presentation of
hitherto neglected storeroom holdings. The Galerie Neue
Meister successfully applied for funding for a joint project
involving the Sociological Institute of Dresden University
of Technology (TU Dresden) and the Potsdam Centre for
Research into Contemporary History, as well as other institutions.
The gallery holds several hundred paintings
dating from the period between 1945 and 1990, only very
few of which can be presented in the permanent exhibition
now (and also in the future). Research into these paintings
– which are of varying quality, but are certainly not all in
the category of “agitprop art” – is also very much underdeveloped
and can now at last be carried out. Within the
framework of this research project, the relevant holdings
of other museums and collections – including those of the
Kunstfonds of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
are also to be investigated and their manner of acquisition
reconstructed. This work will culminate in the publication
of a “Pictorial Atlas of GDR Painting”.
61