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Press conference April 17, 2007

Focal-Point Themes of the Museums of the Province of Upper Austria with a View towards the 2009 Capital of Culture Year

With: Martin Heller, Artistic Director Linz09 and Peter Assmann, Director Landesmuseen

Tuesday, April 17, 2007, 10 a.m.
Landesgalerie Linz, Museumsstr. 14, 4020 Linz

In preparation for the 2009 Capital of Culture year, the Museums of the Province of Upper Austria are developing numerous project, several of which—the large-scale ones in particular—are being organized jointly by Linz09 and the Museums of the Province of Upper Austria.

Most of these projects, which will be staged in the Schlossmuseum, the Landesgalerie, the Biology Center as well as at satellite venues of the Museums of the Province of Upper Austria, are collaborative endeavors with other institutions including those in foreign countries, most notably an extensive joint effort with the Lithuanian Art Museum in Vilnius, Linz’s co-Capital of Culture in 2009.

In addition to these projects, the reopening of the South Wing of Linz Castle is also planned for 2009. Preparations are already underway and the groundbreaking is set for July 13, 2007, which will allow the renovations to be completed just in time for the Capital of Culture year festivities.


Linz09 and the Museums of the Province of Upper Austria are working together

The 2009 Capital of Culture year program is taking shape step by step.

In addition to assessment and expert evaluation of the many project proposals that are still being submitted and work on events being launched by Linz09 on its own, the Capital of Culture organization is currently involved in developing program elements to be staged jointly with cultural facilities—both large and small—of the Province of Upper Austria and the City of Linz.

In collaboration with these institutions, Linz09 is striving to orchestrate a Capital of Culture year lineup of superb quality. Its content and constituent formats are emerging on an ongoing basis.

“With respect to the collaborative program components, our mission is to set European benchmark standards in both form and content. In doing so, we must constantly strive to expand the scope of our local cultural institutions’ regular offerings and to achieve broad diversification of the Capital of Culture year program by taking advantage of tried-and-true settings, approaches and relationships as well as nurturing innovative initiatives at numerous new venues.” (Linz09 Artistic Director Martin Heller)

Working together with the Museums of the Province of Upper Austria is proving to be an ideal way to achieve this goal. Joint projects being developed expressly for the Capital of Culture year deal with National Socialism and the history of the City of Linz. The contents of exhibits about Europe, nature and design are key contributions to the program’s thematic diversity.


FOCAL-POINT THEME: EUROPE / NATURE

Europe’s Green Band (working title)
In cooperation with Linz09
The first special exhibition in the new South Wing of the Linz Schlossmuseum 2009/2010
In cooperation with the Archive of the Province of Upper Austria, the Upper Austrian Nature Conservation Academy as well as NGOs including the IUCN – World Conservation Union and the Österreichischer Naturschutzbund – Austrian Association for the Protection of Nature.

“Europe’s Green Band” is an initiative to conserve valuable natural areas along the former Iron Curtain from Scandinavia to Turkey combined with a consideration of what the people living there have gone through and an effort to ensure them a brighter future through sustainable development. The approach suggested by this task is a consistent link-up of natural history and contemporary history, of the fates of local natural areas and of the people who lived through recent historical events. The exhibition seeks to come to terms with historical issues, current problems and prospects for the future, and situates them in an overall context: “From the Death Zone to the Band of Life.”


Imprisoned in Amber
Biology Center Linz/ Dornach, Spring 2009
in cooperation with the Palanga Amber Museum in Lithuania and the University of Vilnius

Amber will not be displayed here as jewelry but rather as an archive of the earth’s history. Animals and plants hermetically sealed in amber are documents of nature that have been preserved over millions of years. The collections in Lithuania are among the world’s largest; they will be bringing one-of-a-kind objects to Linz. The exhibit will also show how amber is formed and creatures come to be enclosed within it.



Schlossmuseum Linz,May-December 2009
In cooperation with the Vilnius Art Museum

This exhibition aims to be the first to show the great diversity of Europe’s landscapes in all their facets. Selected paintings from the permanent collections of the Museums of the Province of Upper Austria as well as important works on loan from other European museums will present characteristic landscapes that are the result of human cultivation and that have provided settings for human habitation from the Adriatic to the North Sea and from the British Isles to the lowland plains of Hungary.


FOCAL-POINT THEME: HISTORY

Cultural Life and National Socialism in Upper Austria (working title)
In cooperation with Linz09
Schlossmuseum Linz, Fall 2008
In cooperation with the Department of Contemporary History of the Johannes Kepler University Linz and other cultural institutions in Linz and Upper Austria

This exhibition will deal with National Socialism’s influence on cultural life in Upper Austria. This province, which the Nazis officially designated as Upper Danube, was the “Homeland of the Führer”; as such, it was accorded a special role in a number of areas including cultural policymaking. The exhibition will examine to what extent this “special role” actually manifested itself, what cultural policy measures were in fact implemented in Upper Austria during the Nazi era and what everyday cultural life was really like both before and during the war.


„Barlach / Kasper / Thorak / Wotruba“ (working title)
In cooperation with Linz09
Landesgalerie Linz, Fall 2008
In cooperation with the Ernst Barlach Foundation

This exhibition focuses on the question of how the particular works of the respective sculptors functioned in the various political and social systems before and after 1945. In addition to biographies of the individual artists and a discussion of their oeuvres in terms of art history, an analysis of how their works were received by those partaking of them in various historical eras is an essential element of this project, which is being developed jointly with the Ernst Barlach Foundation. The works of these four artists—taken together—provide a representative picture of the interrelationships between politics and art.


FOCAL-POINT THEME: DESIGN


In cooperation with Linz09
Landesgalerie Linz, Summer 2009

“Forum Design” was a 1980 project that garnered great international acclaim on account of its scholarly approach, its concept, the presence in it of the most important positions of the international design world, its large scale, its unique exhibition architecture and the accompanying publication “Design ist unsichtbar” (Design is Invisible). Nevertheless, while “Forum Design” was still running, it was wrenched into the spotlight of a local media campaign directed against several of the individuals responsible for this exhibition. The subsequent withdrawal of sponsor support and the cancellation of public sector subsidies ultimately led to a financial situation that resulted in criminal proceedings, convictions of those in charge of the project and their having to assume personal financial liability for the exhibition’s debts. “The Forum Design Case” exhibition is conceived as an effort to rehash this legal case in the framework of and through the means available to an exhibition, as well as to bring together once again the protagonists, staff members, expert witnesses and critics involved in it.
If feasible, the exhibition will be accompanied by an auxiliary space: a reconstruction of Christopher Alexander’s Linz Café.


ADDITIONAL EXHIBITIONS


Landesgalerie Linz, Spring 2009
In cooperation with the Toulouse Lautrec Museum in Albi

This exclusively European exhibition that will be coming to the Landesgalerie Linz to mark the Capital of Culture year (working title: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – The Intimate Look at Human Existence) brings together paintings by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Being held exactly 100 years after the artist’s first show in Austria, this exhibit reveals a very special aspect of his work that has received too little attention up to now: his precise way of capturing the modern human image at the intersection of public and private spheres. The paintings will be complemented by contemporary photographs, some of which inspired Toulouse-Lautrec or were actually employed by him directly as motifs for his sketches.


Europe’s National Saints
Schlossmuseum Linz, Late 2009
In cooperation with the Northern Italian City of Tolmezzo (Illegio)

In cooperation with the traditional large-scale exhibitions in the Upper Italian City of Tolmezzo, the Museums of the Province of Upper Austria will be presenting a show about Europe’s national saints as the culmination of their Capital of Culture year program in the Schlossmuseum Linz. The fascinating descriptions of these individuals’ lives and the various functions they have assumed, but above all the political background narratives as well as the traits and elements of popular culture that have come to be ascribed to the diverse European national saints bring out a multifaceted picture of European cultural history. Scrutinizing the official and unofficial personalities who have attained the status of national sainthood is a very interesting contribution to the process of seeing how Europeans have developed a conception of self in the past and are going about this today.