To browse Academia. Heidelberg, Arthistoricum. Following thematic paths, visitors will be encouraged to discover the art treasures of the Sculpture Collection and the Museum for Byzantine Art in new and different ways.
In order to make the content of this project accessible to all those interested, the exhibition catalogue is available for free online in both German and English. Although the End of History thesis proposed by Francis Fukuyama was repeatedly and convincingly disavowed, the year nevertheless marked an end of an era in a multitude of ways.
One of the issues that appeared from the changed political and intellectual situation in Europe was the need to juxtapose Western and Eastern narratives of art history. Although benefiting from the perspective of hindsight, contemporary art historical discourses don't seem to have achieved a consensus as to what Eastern European art is-if it does indeed exist-and how it should deal with its own positioning within mainstream Western discourses as inferior and peripheral.
The Gender Check project charts this binary constellation of East and West again by using a third term; gender. This may serve to further open up this nebulous field of art history. This promise of intimacy, which always involves a risk, exists in a historical, political, and cultural context. The ubiquity of digital media shapes our encounters or even replaces them. And yet since early , Covid severely challenges and restricts us. Contacts are avoided and parties are no longer celebrated. Intimacy seems to be in retreat.
Intimacy is something that we are in danger of losing. Intimacy: New Queer Art from Berlin and Beyond presents over 30 artistic positions that negotiate queer intimacy in different ways, from photographs to paintings, sculptures, video-and sound-installations. These artworks invite us to rethink how we look at intimacy; they allow us to witness past intimacies, and they help us to imagine what it means to share intimacy again after the crisis.
