Confronting Identities in German Art: Myths, Reactions, Reflections

October 3, 2002 – January 5, 2003

Drawing on the museum's rich holdings of German art and a number of important loans, this exhibition examined how artists and artworks defined or responded to individual, social and national identities over the course of the last two centuries.

A chronological presentation framed several critical themes, including the relationship between portraiture and fantasy, the place of war as both idealized continuity and rupture, the city as a site of carnivalesque inversions, and the ongoing effort to identify how German art might look. Works by Max Klinger, Emil Nolde, Gabriele Münter, Max Beckman, Käthe Kollowitz, Erich Hechel, Joseph Beuys, Gerog Baselitz, and a group of contemporary artists from the former East Germany were among the highlights.