24 October 2014–25 January 2015
Conference: “Curiosity 2.0: The Cabinet of Curiosities in Contemporary Art,”
16–17 January 2015
Octagon, Academy of Fine Arts Dresden
(HfBK Dresden)
Georg‐Treu‐Platz 1
01067 Dresden
Germany
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 10am–6pm
Exhibition closed 20 December 2014–4 January 2015
www.hfbk-dresden.de
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In 2014 the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden (HfBK) is celebrating the 250th anniversary of its foundation. To mark the occasion Mark Dion will carry out his first project in Dresden, at the invitation of the Art Academy.
For his biggest personal show in Germany to date, Mark Dion (b. 1961, USA) has drawn his inspiration from things hidden away in the collections of the Dresden Art Academy and Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. The broad oeuvre of this dOCUMENTA artist ranges from drawings and prints via videos, photographic essays, sculpture, installations and dioramas to full‐blown expeditions. Mark Dion works with museums and collections all over the world, using his artistic practice to challenge the claim these authorities make to sole sovereignty in the interpretation of knowledge.
In Dresden too, Dion has trawled the depots and archives of illustrious institutions, questioning the systems they traditionally apply to ordering the objects from all around the world which they collect and display. In the process the artist has transformed apparently rigid classifications and triggered debate about the historical context of collections by rearranging their holdings in his complex installations. Following his expeditions into otherwise hidden storehouses, the Academy’s own exhibition space—the Octagon—will be transformed into an Academy of Things, where a fresh look will be taken at the institutional treasures. In cooperation with the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden Mark Dion amplify his exhibition in two “satellits” in the Green Vault and the Albertinum.
For Mark Dion, himself a passionate collector of all sorts of things, the collection at Dresden Art Academy, which boasts an almost encyclopedic diversity, is a copious source of material. The HfBK’s picture collection with over 1,500 items—including valuable paintings by artists such as Casanova, Kügelgen and Matthäi, and tens of thousands of studies—represents the artistic output of more than 250 years.
Curators: Dietmar Rübel & Petra Lange‐Berndt
Project management: Isabelle Lindermann
Academy of Things: The Temporary Art Gallery
A temporary pinacotheca for these works will be set up in the Academy’s Octagon. Interest will focus on the multifarious artefacts used for teaching art—plaster casts, glass slides, pigments and X‐rays, for example. The highlights among these educational aids are the unique anatomical models and preserved specimens of human and animal origin. The Art Academy in Dresden has the biggest and most comprehensive anatomical teaching collection in Germany with more than 500 objects. Mark Dion has made this collection and its ideological implications the focus of his project and will be inviting discussion about these models, which in the past have not all been accessible to the public.
New curiosities for the Green Vault and Wild Animal Salon
Two satellites to this project will pursue their own, different approaches to museum objects and the histories and orders attached to them. For the Historical and New Green Vault—Dresden’s spectacular treasure chamber reopened only a few years ago—Dion revives the notion of the cabinet of curiosities. New objects appear among the historical staging of the permanent palatial display.
At the Albertinum, the home of the Gallery of New Masters and the Sculpture Collection, Mark Dion has created a Wild Animal Salon, a stock‐taking exercise which takes note of the collection’s paintings of wild animals from the early Modern period until the 20th century.
Historisches und Neues Grünes Gewölbe
Residenzschloss Taschenberg 2
01067 Dresden
Hours: Wednesday–Monday 10am–6pm
Galerie Neue Meister im Albertinum /
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen
Tzschirnerplatz 2
01067 Dresden
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 10am–6pm
Conference
The threefold exhibition will be accompanied by an academic conference.
“Curiosity 2.0: The Cabinet of Curiosities in Contemporary Art” from 16 to 17 January 2015 will take a critical look, as the exhibition draws to a close, at the frequent allusions to the cabinet of curiosities found in contemporary art and art criticism. Consideration will be given to how this interest has influenced display formats in museums.
Funded by Kulturstiftung des Bundes; Kulturstiftung Dresden der Dresdner Bank; Kulturstiftung des Freistaates Sachsen; Liebelt‐Stiftung, Hamburg.
Press contact
Andrea Weippert, Academy of Fine Arts Dresden:
T + 49 (0) 351 49267 16 / [email protected]
