Agenda

Two of the great masters of modern art meet in this exhibition in the Reinhart am Stadtgarten building: James Ensor (1860 – 1949) and Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973).

The two artists are juxtaposed under the leitmotif of the masquerade. The mask as object and symbol, the disguise as a game with identity and staging are central questions of artistic creation for Ensor and Picasso.

While Picasso came to Cubism through his study of African masks as cult objects, Ensor is considered the painter of masks par excellence. Early on, the mask appeared as a source of inspiration to both of them and left its mark on their respective works.

These artistic appropriations are complemented by the interest of jugglers and actors: the spectacle of the circus with Picasso, the ritual of carnival with Ensor. Based on drawings and prints and selected paintings and sculptures, a dialogue between the two artists emerges.

Industry in the canton of Aargau has written international history. Selected objects, photographs and unique contemporary documents provide a penetrating picture of the diversity, innovative power and global networking of industry in this canton.

The exhibition Von Menschen und Maschinen in the historic SBB-building (SBB-Gebäude) in Windisch shows the industrial cultural heritage and how businesses in the canton have coped with the structural changes in recent decades.

It points out the challenges and discusses how people will work, produce and consume in the (near) future.

Further information: www.museumaargau.ch/menschen-und-maschinen

The idea of Utopia thrives particularly well in times of crises. The exhibition explores this phenomenon. Future visions for a better world usually emerge during a crisis.

There are scores of other examples from history of utopias and visions of the future that emerged during times of crises.

The coronavirus pandemic is the most profound seismic shift since World War II. So it’s no surprise that all kinds of interpretations and blueprints for the future are being thrown about. The exhibition (Virus – Crisis – Utopia) spins together some of the past and future threads.

A look back shows how vast the breadth of utopian thinking has always been.

Some Utopias turned out to be prophetic visions with a high level of realistic possibility, others were purely fantasies.

This is also the case with today’s (post) coronavirus utopias. The spectrum ranges from the meaningful and ingenious, to the totally warped. But which is which?

Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889–1943) was a pioneer of abstraction. She devised a form of abstraction brought to life by her craftsmanship.

Her oeuvre encompasses textile pieces, a puppet theater, costumes, murals, furniture, architecture, graphic designs, paintings, drawings, sculptures, and reliefs.

Long after she first discovered dance as an expressive register in the orbit of Dada (zurich 1916), the lively interplay of equilibrium and motion remained a key feature of her art.

The exhibition ‘Living Abstraction’ (Gelebte Abstraktion) is organised in cooperation with the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Tate in London.

One of the many unanswered questions in art is the one relating to its origins. The discovery of Palaeolithic cave paintings towards the end of the 19th century radically changed views concerning the beginnings of art.

The exhibition (Art of Prehistoric Times – Rock Paintings from the Frobenius Expeditions) presents a number of these paintings.

The German anthropologist Leo Frobenius (1877-1938) and his team copied prehistoric rock art in the first half of the twentieth century.

On show are around 120 copies of original paintings, some of them several metres long, produced by Frobenius’ team of artists between 1913 and the 1950s.

The exhibition also looks at the impact that the rock paintings (that means their copies) had on modern art.

In the 1930s, Charlie Chaplin was one of the very few film-makers who questioned Adolf Hitler and his party’s legitimacy and the threat they posed to the world.

Working on a satire of Nazism and the persecution of Jews on the eve of World War II was very brave indeed: Chaplin faced financial and political pressure and financed the film alone, against all odds – simply because he felt compelled to defend the oppressed.

When the premiere was held in New York on 15 October 1940, the United States had not yet entered the war. In most European countries, the film was not released until after the Second World War or even after 1989.

The show features unpublished on-set photos and sheds light on the context in which the movie was made, produced and distributed.

The trilingual exhibition (in English, French, and German) features behind-the-scenes footage, scenes of Chaplin directing his actors, deleted scenes, and stories behind the special effects used in the film.

These insights into his filmmaking process also show how his studios operated and reflect the team’s historical research.

After the division of Germany in 1949, design and everyday culture went their separate ways on both sides of the border. In the West, design became a driving force in the »Wirtschaftswunder«, while in the East it was absorbed into the socialist planned economy.

More than thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989), the exhibition (German Design 1949–1989: Two Countries, One History) presents the first overview of post-war design in the two Germanies.

The show will offer a comparative selection of design from East and West Germany and explore ideological and aesthetic differences as well as parallels and interrelations between East and West.

Exhibits range from iconic pieces of furniture and lamps to graphic, industrial, and interior design to fashions, textiles, and personal ornaments.

The new permanent exhibition (Le définitif – c’est le Provisoire) focuses on the artist Jean Tinguely (1925-1991) and the media impact of his kinetic sculptures and actions.

The show draws to an unprecedented degree on the museum’s unique collection of documents and archive materials.

 The exhibition also offers information on the materiality and functioning of Tinguely’s works, providing interesting insights into their construction, as well as surprising hidden technical details concerning their conservation.

The information includes recent findings concerning the radio sculptures of the 1960s, and approaches to restoring such fragile works as Ballet des pauvres (1961) or the Balubas (from 1961).

Georges Bemberg (1915-2011) collected paintings, drawings and iconic works of art, ranging from the Renaissance to the 20th century. The L’Hermitage shows a selection of works from this prestigious private collection.

This collection is exhibited for the first time outside the walls of the Bemberg Foundation in Toulouse.

The collection encompasses an exceptional quality of paintings and drawings from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but also of the old masters, masterpieces of German, Flemish, Venetian and French art.

The exhibition (Chefs-d’œuvre de la collection Georges Bemberg) brings together 132 of the most remarkable paintings and drawings from this collection.

The exhibition (Sing-Song-Signs & Folded Stories) focuses on the art works by Warja Lavater (1913-2007) and on her Folded Stories.

The artist devised a picture language in her folded books – Wilhelm Tell (William Tell, 1960), Rotkäppchen (Little Red Riding Hood, 1960) and Leidenschaft und Vernunft (Sense and Sensibility, 1961).

She went on to explore this technique further in various other media and artworks. She achieved international renown with Wilhelm Tell, published by the Museum of Modern Art in 1962 and with Imageries.