'OBJECT ATLAS. FIELDWORK IN THE MUSEUM' CURATED BY DR. CLEMENTINE DELISS AT THE WELTKULTUREN MUSEUM FRANKFURT

Field drawings and photographs of phallic megaliths made by artist Alf Bayrle (1900-1982, father of Thomas Bayrle) during an anthropological expedition to Ethiopia in the 1930s are shown in Object Atlas for the first time together with the original stone and wood Ethiopian Megaliths collected by the museum.

Thomas Bayrle selected finely woven fish traps from Indonesia and New Guinea and designed his own ‘Trap for Stupid Cars’

Antje Majewski series of paintings related to mythical, prehistoric stones from New Guinea

Marc Camille Chaimowicz’ installation “The Frankfurt Suite, 2011” is based on floral elements from Indonesia and Samoa as well as selected hats, headrests and belts from Africa

Marc Camille Chaimowicz and Andrew Wheatley

Otobong Nkanga: weapons, jewellery and currency from West and Central Africa as well as new posters produced in Lagos and textiles woven in Tilburg


 Simon Popper room 1


Simon Popper, West Africa cult figures


watercolours by Simon Popper and Peruvian Moche ceramics


Simon Popper, wall murals

exhibition views, Simon Popper rooms

The exhibition’s reading room features the Qumran Verlag, Frankfurt’s seminal publishing house. Initiated in the 1980s by writer and anthropologist Hans-Jürgen Heinrichs, Qumran’s books and artists’ editions epitomise the fertile dialogue between anthropologists, artists and writers in the twentieth century.


Entrance lobby of the Welkulturen Museum

visitors to the Welkutluren Museum during the opening


visitors outside the museum, waiting to enter the exhibition


OBJECT ATLAS – Fieldwork in the Museum
Weltkulturen Museum, Schaumainkai 29, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
25th January 2012 – 16th September 2012

Exhibition curated by Clémentine Deliss with artefacts from Angola, Brazil, Canada, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Namibia, Nigeria, New Guinea, Peru, Samoa and the Solomon Islands as well as artworks by Alf Bayrle (†), Helke Bayrle (D), Thomas Bayrle (D), Marc Camille Chaimowicz (UK/F), Sunah Choi (Korea), Antje Majewski (D), Otobong Nkanga (Nigeria) and Simon Popper (UK).

“Fieldwork, these days, doesn’t mean that I need to go to Africa to do my research. Instead, the museum with its laboratory is a transducer where forms of research on a micro-level can be developed. This begins with the experience of pulling open a drawer and watching the keeper of the collection take out an object and place it on the table in front of you. Just looking at artefacts in the museum’s stores has helped me to move forward.” (Thomas Bayrle, 2011)

“In all cultures there has been a constant exchange of materials, goods, ideas and people that consciously or unconsciously shapes, turns and shifts our perception. There’s always something somewhere from another culture. In this exhibition, artists make the objects move from one thought to another, from one space to another, creating a layering. They situate these objects once again, producing a new mapping for the 21st century. The word atlas gives a geographic body to all these artefacts without reducing them to a single world map.” (Otobong Nkanga)

For Object Atlas, seven artists were invited over the course of 2011 to Antje Majewski shows a series of paintings related to mythical, prehistoric stones from New Guinea expeditions into the heart of the museum’s stores in Frankfurt. Employing a contemporary approach to fieldwork and with a pronounced sensibility towards visual and material culture, each artist selected an assemblage of objects from the collection of over 67,000 artefacts. Working in close dialogue with the Weltkulturen Museum’s research curators, image archivists and librarians, the guest artists lived and worked in the newly established Weltkulturen Labor with its apartments, studios, seminar rooms, laboratory, and image bank. This unusual form of domestic fieldwork has resulted in an experimental set of new artworks, produced on site and directly related to the ethnographic collections of the museum.

The exhibition presents these artefacts in special vitrines designed by Mathis Esterhazy together with these new prototype artworks. Marc Camille Chaimowicz’ installation “The Frankfurt Suite, 2011” is based on floral elements from Indonesia and Samoa as well as selected hats, headrests and belts from Africa. Nigerian artist Otobong Nkanga shows weapons, jewellery and currency from West and Central Africa as well as new posters produced in Lagos and textiles woven in Tilburg. Antje Majewski shows a series of paintings related to mythical, prehistoric stones from New Guinea. Simon Popper examines historical inventory cards from the museum and uses these to develop a new series of paintings exhibited together with Peruvian Moche ceramics dating back over 2,000 years, cult figures from West Africa and betel lime containers from New Guinea. Thomas Bayrle selects finely woven fish traps from Indonesia and New Guinea and designs his own ‘Trap for Stupid Cars’. Helke Bayrle (D) and Sunah Choi (Korea) present a video shot in the museum’s stores that investigates the figurative detail on over one hundred artefacts. The exhibition’s reading room features the Qumran Verlag, Frankfurt’s seminal publishing house. Initiated in the 1980s by writer and anthropologist Hans-Jürgen Heinrichs, Qumran’s books and artists’ editions epitomise the fertile dialogue between anthropologists, artists and writers in the twentieth century. In addition, field drawings and photographs of phallic megaliths made by artist Alf Bayrle (1900-1982, father of Thomas Bayrle) during an anthropological expedition to Ethiopia in the 1930s are shown in Object Atlas for the first time together with the original stone and wood steles collected by the museum.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue in German and English with unpublished essays by Richard Sennett, Paul Rabinow and the late Hubert Fichte, discussions between Lothar Baumgarten and Michael Oppitz, texts by Clémentine Deliss, Hans-Jürgen Heinrichs, Richard Kuba, Eva Ch. Raabe, Mona Suhrbier, Vanessa von Gliszczynski as well as interviews with the participating artists. Plus numerous facsimiles of anthropological texts and images. 512 pages, 250 colour illustrations/photographs, Kerber Verlag, € 35.

With the kind support of the Hessische Kulturstiftung, Frobenius-Institut and Kunsthaus Graz, Universalmuseum Joanneum. Media Partner, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

http://www.weltkulturenmuseum.de/en

WELKUTUREN MUSEUM NEWSLETTER: BAUMGARTEN & OPPITZ INSIDE THE ARBORIUM

Lothar Baumgarten & Michael Oppitz, 'Conquering the southern continent in the haze of a 10 cent cigar', Land of Tree Ferns, Tropical Arborium, Botanic Gardens, Berlin, September 1972. Photo: Angela Schonberger

Yesterday I received the beautiful newsletter of the Welkulturen Museum in Frankfurt, now under the direction of Doctor Clementine Deliss. A pink newsletter with the activities of the museum on one side, a poster with this great image of Baumgarten and Oppitz inside the Tropical Arborium of the Botanical Gardens in Berlin in 1972.

http://www.mwk-frankfurt.de/English/

DR. CLEMENTINE DELISS, NEW DIRECTOR OF THE MUSEUM FOR WORLD CULTURES IN FRANKFURT

Dr. Deliss photographed outside Greville House, her London residence


Neue Direktorin für das Museum der Weltkulturen

Dr. Clémentine Deliss soll nach dem Wunsch des Frankfurter Kulturdezernenten Prof. Dr. Felix Semmelroth die neue Direktorin des Museums der Weltkulturen werden. Die 49-jährige gebürtige Britin, Tochter einer französischen Mutter und eines österreichischen Vaters, lebt derzeit in London und ist Leiterin des wissenschaftlichen Langzeit-Projekts „Future Academy“. Dabei handelt es sich um ein internationales Kunstlabor, das in Kooperation mit dem Edinburgh College of Art, den National Galeries of Scotland und der University of Edinburgh neue interdisziplinäre Formen zukünftiger Kunstinstitutionen gemeinsam mit Studierenden, Künstlern und Wissenschaftlern untersucht und entwickelt. Ein Schwerpunkt liegt dort auf der zukünftigen Ausgestaltung von Sammlungen. Zudem leitet sie das „Randolph Cliff Artist in Residence Programme“ des Edinburgh College of Art und der National Galleries of Scotland.

Clémentine Deliss studierte Ethnologie und Gegenwartskunst in Wien, Paris und London und spricht fließend Deutsch, Französisch und Englisch. Sie wurde an der University of London mit einem Thema über die Französische Ethnologie am Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts promoviert, das sich mit der Beziehung zwischen ethnografischen Sammlungen und dem Aufbau des Musee de L’Homme in Paris beschäftigt. Neben ihrer ethnologischen Ausbildung bringt Deliss viel Erfahrung als Leiterin von Festivals, internationalen Ausstellungen und Forschungsprojekten mit, bei denen die Interpretation und Vermittlung von Kunst und Ethnologie im Mittelpunkt stehen.

So war sie von 1992 bis 1995 die künstlerische Leiterin von "africa95", einem von der Royal Academy of Arts, London koordinierten Festival, an dem über 60 Institutionen in Großbritannien beteiligt waren und das afrikanische Künstler, Musiker, Filmemacher und Schriftsteller zusammenbrachte. Ihre interkulturelle Publikationsreihe "Metronome", wurde in zwei Editionen der documenta Kassel (10 und 12) offiziell präsentiert.

Als internationale Beraterin war sie für zahlreiche europäische und afrikanische Ministerien, Gremien und Kommissionen tätig, unter anderem für das französische und das senegalesische Kulturministerium. Für die Europäische Kommission war sie externe Beraterin für kulturelle Förderprogramme der EU wie Leonardo da Vinci und Socrates und erhielt 1996 einen Expertenvertrag für mehrere Projekte in Dakar, unter anderem rief sie damit die Publikation "Metronome" ins Leben.

Gastdozenturen, Projekte und Ausstellungsvorhaben führten sie durch ganz Europa und rund um den Globus, unter anderem nach Chicago, Melbourne, Tokio, Wien, Paris und von 1999 bis 2000 an die Städelschule in Frankfurt als Gastprofessorin.

Für das Museum der Weltkulturen stehen für Deliss eine Analyse und Neubewertung der Sammlungen, der Bibliothek und der unterschiedlichen Forschungsfelder im Hinblick auf die zukünftige Ausrichtung des sich erweiternden Museums im Vordergrund. Außerdem möchte sie die Zusammenarbeit mit anderen Kulturinstitutionen in Frankfurt wie beispielsweise der Universität, dem Literaturhaus, dem Städel und der Städelschule pflegen und weiter ausbauen und neue Kursangebote für ein breites Publikum entwickeln.

"Dr. Clémentine Deliss ist eine profilierte Kuratorin und Ausstellungsmacherin von herausragender interkultureller Kompetenz. Mit ihrer Arbeit an der Schnittstelle von Kunst und Ethnologie hat sie sich nicht nur international einen Namen gemacht, sondern sich auch weltweit prominent vernetzt. Ihre Vorstellungen von der zukünftigen Rolle eines sich vergrößernden Museums der Weltkulturen in einer von vielen Nationalitäten geprägten Stadt wie Frankfurt sind sehr überzeugend", erklärt Kulturdezernent Prof. Semmelroth. Der Stadtrat hat seine Entscheidung mit der Koalition abgestimmt und wird die Kandidatin im Herbst im Magistrat präsentieren. Sofern der Magistrat ihrer Berufung zustimmt, wird sich Clémentine Deliss mit ihren Überlegungen für das Museum der Weltkulturen der Öffentlichkeit vorstellen.

http://www.mdw-frankfurt.de/English/

English translation thanks to google translator:

New Director for the Museum of World Cultures

According to the wishes of the Frankfurt Director of Culture Professor Felix Semmelroth, the new director of the Museum of World Cultures is Dr. Clémentine Deliss. The 49-year-old, born in London and daughter of a French mother and an Austrian father, lives in London and heads of the long-term research project "Future Academy". This is an international art laboratory at Edinburgh College of Art, and run in collaboration with the National Galleries of Scotland and the University of Edinburgh, which tests out new interdisciplinary dimensions to future art institutions and is developed together with students, artists and scientists. The current focus of Future Academy is on the development of future collections. In addition, she directs the "Randolph Cliff Artist in Residence Program" of the Edinburgh College of Art and the National Galleries of Scotland.

Clémentine Deliss studied social anthropology and contemporary art in Vienna, Paris and London and speaks fluent German, French and English. She has a PhD from the University of London on French Ethnology at the beginning of the 20th Century and the relationship between ethnographic collections and the establishment of the Musee de L'Homme in Paris. In addition to her studies in social anthropology Deliss brings with her extensive experience as the director of festivals, international exhibitions and research projects, which focus on the interpretation and presentation of art and ethnology.

From 1992 to 1995, she was the artistic director of "africa95" together with the Royal Academy of Arts in London and which involved over 60 institutions and collaborations between African artists, musicians, filmmakers and writers.

Her cross-cultural publication "Metronome", was presented at two editions of Documenta, Kassel (Documenta 10 and 12).

As an international consultant, she has worked for several European and African government ministries, boards and commissions, including the French and the Senegalese Ministries of Culture. For the European Commission, she was external consultant for EU cultural programs such as Leonardo da Vinci and Socrates, and in 1996 received a major expertise contract to curate several projects in Dakar.

Deliss has been guest lecturer and directed research investigations and publishing projects across Europe and around the globe, including Chicago, Melbourne, Tokyo, Vienna, and Paris. From 1998 to 2000 she was a visiting professor at the Staedel School in Frankfurt.

For the Museum of World Cultures, Deliss reassess the collections, the library and the different fields of research in relation to the forthcoming expansion of the Museum and the proposed new building. She also wants to develop cooperation with other cultural institutions in Frankfurt such as the University, the Literature House, the Städel and the Städelschule and expand and develop new courses and a Laboratory of World Cultures.

"Dr Clémentine Deliss is a prominent curator and exhibition organizer of outstanding cross-cultural competence. Through her work at the interface between art and ethnology, she has not only made an international name, but also established a prominent worldwide network. Her ideas about the future role and the expansion of the Museum of World Cultures in a world shaped by many the many cultural backgrounds that can be found in a city like Frankfurt are very convincing" said Director of Culture, Prof. Semmelroth. The City of Frankfurt unanimously voted of Dr Clementine Deliss as Director of the Museum of World Cultures on 30th October 2009.

http://www.mdw-frankfurt.de/English/