Museums in Hessen honor Joseph Beuys

• ofAnja Laud

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Museums in Hessen have many offers for the 100th birthday of the artist of the century

Joseph Beuys had a special relationship with Hessen. “From 1964 onwards, the Documenta in Kassel was repeatedly the scene of his actions. And in Frankfurt in 1979 he was also involved in the founding of the list ‘Other political association: The Greens’ ”, said Hessian Minister of Culture Angela Dorn (Greens) on the occasion of his 100th birthday this week. Not only the minister, museums in Hesse also pay tribute to him.

State Museum Darmstadt With “Block Beuys”, the Landesmuseum Darmstadt owns the world’s largest coherent complex of works by the artist, who died in 1986. In addition, the house also owns his “Ulysses notebooks”, with which he extended “Ulysses”, the novel by the Irish writer James Joyce, by six chapters. The six exercise books, filled with 355 drawings between 1958 and 1961, were to be shown for the first time as a total work of art in the State Museum on the occasion of Beuys’ 100th birthday. But the beginning of the show “Joseph Beuys. Ulysses ”has been moved to June 30th due to the pandemic.

However, for International Museum Day on Sunday, May 16, the State Museum is dedicating an extensive online program to Joseph Beuys. For example, a video shows an electric arc experiment that Beuys, who had a great interest in natural science, showed at the 1968 Documenta in Kassel.

The Frankfurt actor Claudio Vilardo also puts himself in the role of Beuys in two film performances. In the museum podcast “Das Grüne Sofa”, the artist Jonathan Meese and Mechthild Haas, curator of the “Ulysses” exhibition and director of the graphic collection, talk about the artist of the century. Families can also download hands-on activities for children.

www.hlmd.de

Wiesbaden Museum The Wiesbaden Museum also has an important Beuys collection. It was compiled by the medical and art historian Axel Hinrich Murken, who worked with Beuys on the healing powers of art. The Wiesbadeners take the 100th birthday as an opportunity to activate the special artistic potential of Beuys’ works in three “intervention weeks”, as they write.

The first of these weeks is entitled “Until everything is said – Conversations in the Beuys room on the healing powers of art”. From Tuesday, June 8th to Sunday, June 13th, Matthias Schenk (Wiesbaden) and Gerhard Schuster (Vienna and Bochum) will be available in the Beuys room of the museum to talk to visitors about the topic.

Together with his wife Beatrice, Schenk created the “Experience Field for Developing the Senses” in Freudenberg Castle in Wiesbaden. Beuys had done preliminary artistic work for this. Schuster is an anthroposophist and employee of the Achberg cultural center.

Two further weeks of intervention are planned from July 27th to 30th (“The future we want must be invented – Conversations about democracy”) and from October 5th to 12th (“The healing powers of art”).

www.museum-wiesbaden.de

Hessian Cultural Foundation The reading book “Beuys in Hessian Collections”, which is being produced by the Hessian Cultural Foundation, is expected to appear in autumn. It is intended to provide an overview of the Beuys works that are in the state museums of Kassel, Darmstadt, Wiesbaden and the Museum of Modern Art (MMK) in Frankfurt, as well as in private collections. With state funds, the foundation has sponsored several purchases of works by the artist for Hessian museums, most recently the “boxing match for direct democracy” for the MMK in November 2018.

The Hessen Kassel Museum Landscape also pays tribute to Beuys with activities and presentations. In the new gallery, for example, she exhibits the work “Das Rudel”. An overview of all offers can be found online.

www.beuyslaborkassel2021.de

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