Michaela Melián: Bringing Gustav Metzger Back to Nürnberg

Michaela Melián’s public sculpture Bringing Gustav Metzger Back to Nürnberg was installed in front of Kunsthalle Nürnberg on September 18, 2025, the same institution that hosted Gustav Metzger’s 1999 solo exhibition Ein Schnitt entlang der Zeit. The sculpture was created by Melián as a tribute to Gustav Metzger (1926–2017), who was born in Nuremberg and is now widely regarded as one of the most influential artists of his generation. It consists of a framed steel plate the size of a billboard, mounted in front of the historic city wall adjacent to the Kunsthalle. A poster of the 1938 photograph selected by Metzger was affixed to the plate, and a second steel plate subsequently welded on top, covering the historical image in keeping with the concept of Metzger’s Historic Photographs series.

As a starting point, the work takes Metzger’s own piece Historic Photographs: Hitler-Youth, Eingeschweißt (1997). For his first institutional solo exhibition in Germany, Metzger encased a historical press photograph, taken on 10 September 1938 at the NSDAP Party Congress in Nuremberg, between two steel plates, making it completely inaccessible to view. The image shows a Hitler Youth rally in the Nuremberg stadium, with numerous adolescents the same age as Metzger at that time. 

Gustav Metzger was born to Orthodox Jewish parents in Nuremberg in 1926. In January 1939, his Polish-born parents sent twelve-year-old Gustav and his brother Mendel to England on one of the Kindertransporte to protect them from increasing persecution. His parents and the majority of his family were murdered in Nazi death camps. 

In 2023, Kunstverein Nürnberg presented Melián’s solo exhibition Der dritte Raum, focusing on her memory-political and research-based works on National Socialism developed over the past two decades. This exhibition was part of the project Der Kunstverein Nürnberg – Albrecht Dürer Gesellschaft ff., a critical and scholarly examination of the Kunstverein’s institutional ties to the Nazi era, initiated by the Kunstverein Nürnberg board and curated by Wolfgang Brauneis.

Michaela Melián is a visual artist and musician known for her multimedia installations, radio plays and sound works. She is a member of the band F.S.K. and co-published the artist magazine Mode & Verzweiflung. From 2010 to 2023 she taught as a professor of time-based media at the University of Fine Arts Hamburg (HFBK). Melián works have been exhibited at Lenbachhaus Munich, Fundació Juan Miró Barcelona, Kunsthal Rotterdam, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Kunsthalle Mannheim, Cubitt London, Galerie im Taxispalais Innsbruck, Lentos Museum Linz, MAK Vienna, Ludlow New York and Deichtorhallen Hamburg, among others.

Bringing Gustav Metzger Back to Nürnberg is produced as part of Symposium Urbanum Nürnberg 2025, supported by the Building Department of the City of Nuremberg, in cooperation with Kunsthalle Nürnberg and Kunstverein Nürnberg—Albrecht Dürer Gesellschaft.