Long Story Short

For the first time since its opening in 2009, Museum Brandhorst is devoting itself with Long Story Short to a chronological presentation of its collection. This show brings together nearly eighty works by more than thirty artists from the Brandhorst Collection, including significant recent acquisitions such as Martine Syms’s DED (2021), as well as over twenty works being shown for the first time—among them pieces by Jacqueline Humphries, Laura Owens, and Giulio Paolini.

Art stories
Since its opening, the museum’s holdings have grown from 800 to over 2,000 works of art, weaving together multiple strands from contemporary and recent art. These works provide both focused and wide-ranging insights into artistic production over the past seventy years, especially in Europe and the United States. Rather than attempting to present a purportedly complete history of this period, the exhibition Long Story Short strings together selected movements, aesthetic concerns, and artistic positions from the 1960s to today, creating a sequence of individual art histories.

Art as a mirror of society
Beyond formal developments and turning points, the exhibition considers how art responds to historical events, social changes, and technological innovations, and how it reflects them in artistic processes. What impact did the postwar economic boom have on artists’ engagement with materials? What did the politicization of society in the 1960s mean for artistic practice? In what ways has digitalization changed the production of art?

From the 1960s to the present
Each gallery functions as an exhibition in its own right, narrating a specific art-historical story within the context of its time or focusing on selected groups of work by individual artists. Beginning with the process-oriented material explorations of Arte Povera (featuring Jannis Kounellis, Marisa Merz, Mario Merz, and Giulio Paolini) and the formal reduction of Minimalism (such as Richard Tuttle’s playful geometric forms), the exhibition moves through conceptual photography of the late 1970s (Victor Burgin), intense investigations of body, gender, and identity in the 1980s (including Georg Herold and Rosemarie Trockel), and the influential painting discourses of the 1990s (with Charline von Heyl, Albert Oehlen, Laura Owens, and others).

The engagement with digital media and technologies—seen in works by Kerstin Brätsch, Mark Leckey, Jacqueline Humphries, and Sondra Perry—reflects one aspect of artistic production today and forms an open-ended conclusion to the exhibition.

Discovering art
The range of exhibits extends from monumental works—such as Mark Leckey’s 10-meter-high inflatable sculpture Inflatable Felix (2020), a pop icon based on the first image ever broadcast on television—to André Cadere’s Barre de bois rond (1976), a hand-painted wooden rod just 29 centimeters long that the artist once smuggled into other exhibitions.

Between these poles unfolds a panorama of artistic strategies as surprising as they are sensually engaging: Marisa Merz, in her film La conta (1967), transforms an everyday kitchen scene into a feminist manifesto; Victor Burgin’s Zoo 78 (1978) stages divided Berlin as a city of the mind; and Jacqueline Humphries’s Black Light Paintings (2005) glow in the dark—paintings that become light sources themselves, creating a club-like atmosphere in the museum.

Finally, with Martine Syms’s monumental video installation DED (2021), a new generation meets the present: her digital avatar traverses an endless landscape of pain, humor, and rebirth—a powerful commentary on body, media, and self-image in the twenty-first century.

With works by Kerstin Brätsch, Victor Burgin, André Cadere, DAS INSTITUT , Walter De Maria, Wade Guyton, Georg Herold, Charline von Heyl, Jacqueline Humphries, KAYA, Jannis Kounellis, Michael Krebber, Louise Lawler, Mark Leckey, Mario Merz, Marisa Merz, Albert Oehlen, Kayode Ojo, Laura Owens, Palermo, Giulio Paolini, Sondra Perry, Sigmar Polke, Seth Price, Amy Sillman, Frank Stella, Martine Syms, Niele Toroni, Rosemarie Trockel, Richard Tuttle, Cy Twombly, Franz West

Concept and curation by Dr. Monika Bayer-Wermuth, Chief Curator, Museum Brandhorst, and Lena Tilk, Research Associate, Museum Brandhorst

Galleries curated by Dr. Monika Bayer-Wermuth, Chief Curator, Museum Brandhorst; Franziska Linhardt, Curator, Museum Brandhorst; Benedikt Seerieder, Curator, Museum Brandhorst; Lena Tilk, Research Associate, Museum Brandhorst; and Sabine Weingartner, Guest Curator; with the assistance of Dr. Katharina Fischer, Team Assistant, Museum Brandhorst.

The exhibition is supported by
PIN. Freunde der Pinakothek der Moderne e.V. 
Allianz, Partner von PIN. Freunde der Pinakothek der Moderne e.V.