FRANKFURT.- After a duration of fifteen weeks, the major Dürer exhibition at the Städel Museum will be ending this coming Sunday, 2 February 2014. By that time, more than 250,000 visitors – including some 23 percent from outside Germany – will have seen the show on the Renaissance artist. “Dürer” is thus surpassing major Frankfurt visitor successes such as “Rembrandt Rembrandt” (2003) with 245,000 visitors, or “Cranach the Elder” (2007/08) with 205,000, and earning the status as second most well-attended exhibition in the nearly two hundred years of the Städel Museum’s history. With 367,033 visitors, only the Botticelli show staged in 2009 has been more successful to date. For the final weekend of the Dürer presentation, the Städel has extended its opening hours. On Saturday, 1 February from 10:00 am to midnight, and Sunday, 2 February from 10:00 am to 8:00 pm, visitors will have one last opportunity to experience the approximately 280 works on display in this exhibition on the German Renaissance master.

“We are extremely pleased that the Dürer exhibition has enjoyed so much popularity. With it we have continued our tradition of successful Old Master exhibitions and sparked the enthusiasm of a wide public for the multifaceted oeuvre of Albrecht Dürer. The strong national and international response to the exhibition show that both the underlying scholarly concept and the target-group-oriented education programme were right on the mark, and that Dürer’s lifelike masterpieces are as capable as ever of fascinating and inspiring people”, comments Städel director Max Hollein on the successful show.

“Albrecht Dürer. His art in context” was accompanied by an extensive museum education programme. Events such as the 1822 Städel Nacht “Dürer Renaissession” with live music and DJ sets on the exhibition, studio workshops, and lectures by renowned scholars proved extremely popular. The audio guide, whose German version was spoken by the actor Heino Ferch, was used by 20 percent of the visitors. The education programme was complemented by a Dürer app developed especially for the show and providing in-depth information along with the complete audio tour in German and English with a picture gallery and texts on every station. Approximately 52,000 visitors purchased their tickets to the exhibition online.

No sooner will the Dürer show end than the installation of yet another highlight will get underway in the exhibition annex. From 5 March to 15 June 2014, the Städel Museum will present “Emil Nolde. Retrospective”. Some 140 works, including a number of paintings and prints by the artist never before shown outside Seebüll, will be on view. Comprising paintings, watercolours and prints from all phases of the artist’s career, the selection will range from Expressionist landscapes to glittering nocturnal scenes of Berlin, exotic South Seas motifs, and religious depictions. The exhibition hall of the Department of Prints and Drawings will open again on 19 February. Here the Städel will present “Vis-á-vis. Portraits in the Department of Prints and Drawings”, a selection of some 100 works from the department’s own holdings. Well and lesser known artists, for example Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Edouard Manet, Vincent van Gogh, Edvard Munch, Käthe Kollwitz, Hans am Ende, Max Beckmann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Albert Müller, Otto Pankok, Olaf Gulbransson, David Hockney, and Christian Boltanski, will be represented by choice works exploring a genre of major art-historical importance – the portrait – in fascinating and widely different ways.