MUNICH.- A lot has happened at the
Museum Brandhorst since it opened in May 2009. Along with numerous exhibitions, the Brandhorst Collection has grown dramatically—from 700 to more than 1,200 artworks. It now ranks among the most important museum collections of contemporary art in Europe.
The museum’s tenth birthday in May 2019 is the occasion for a large-scale exhibition drawn entirely from this expanded collection. Forever Young—10 Years Museum Brandhorst traces an arc ranging from the 1960s to the present day. Alongside renowned and popular highlights from the collection, a particular focus is placed on acquisitions from recent years—including major works by Charline von Heyl, Louise Lawler, Amy Sillman, Seth Price, Wolfgang Tillmans, Arthur Jafa, Alexandra Bircken, and Monika Baer, among others—many of which have never been shown in Munich.
The exhibition includes some 250 works by 45 artists and has three main themes, each of which can stand alone and yet also make reference to one another. The first focuses on Andy Warhol and the ongoing legacy of Pop art, especially its often overlooked political and socio-critical dimensions. Unconventional lifestyles, the experience of marginalization due to skin color and sexual orientation, interventions in public space, and the intersection of art, fashion, and music all emerge as central concerns. The second strand concentrates on the controversial topic of subjectivity in contemporary society—and therefore also on the effects of late capitalism on identity formation. The third section presents a short history of painting since the 1960s, and specifically how this traditional artistic genre has expanded and adapted itself in recent decades through an engagement with emerging digital technologies and media dissemination, developments that have also been examined in a series of recent exhibitions at the museum, including Painting 2.0: Expression in the Information Age, Wade Guyton – The New York Studio, Kerstin Brätsch: Innovation and Jutta Koether – Tour de Madame.
In addition, two solo presentations of works by Jacqueline Humphries and Albert Oehlen inaugurate a new exhibition series, entitled “Spot On,” highlighting outstanding and recently acquired bodies of work by individual artists in the collection. Subsequent exhibitions in the series will focus on R.H. Quaytman, Michael Krebber, and Ed Ruscha.
Finally, the gallery presenting Twombly’s monumental rose paintings can once again be experienced in its original form as envisioned by the artist. In addition to the permanently installed “Lepanto” cycle (2001) and numerous other works spanning the artist’s entire six-decade career, a prominent new acquisition from Twombly’s last, color-intensive work series, “Camino Real” (2011), will be displayed for the first time.
The anniversary will be celebrated with an opening weekend of talks, educational programs, dance and music, from May 24 until May 26, 2019. The exhibition is on view through April 2020 and will be accompanied by a diverse public program with lectures, talks, performances, exhibition tours and workshops.
With artworks by: Michel Auder, Richard Avedon, Monika Baer, Nairy Baghramian, Georg Baselitz, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Joseph Beuys, Alexandra Bircken, Cosima von Bonin, Kerstin Brätsch, Günther Brus, Nicole Eisenman, Wade Guyton, Guyton\Walker, Keith Haring, Georg Herold, Charline von Heyl, Damien Hirst, Jacqueline Humphries, Jörg Immendorff, Arthur Jafa, KAYA, Mike Kelley, Martin Kippenberger, Jutta Koether, Jeff Koons, David LaChapelle, Louise Lawler, Hans-Jörg Mayer, Bruce Nauman, Cady Noland, Albert Oehlen, Laura Owens, Sigmar Polke, Seth Price, Gerhard Richter, Ed Ruscha, Amy Sillman, Josh Smith, Sturtevant, Wolfgang Tillmans, Rosemarie Trockel, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Christopher Wool
