Collection and departure – Dresden State Art Collections present annual theme and programme 2023

At their annual press conference today, the Dresden State Art Collections (SKD) announced their exhibition highlights for 2023. Thematically, the coming year at the SKD will be determined by the motto “Collection and Departure”.

Image above: Adriaen van Utrecht, Large Still Life with Dog and Cat, 1647
Oil on canvas; 184 x 227 cm
© Old Masters Picture Gallery, Dresden State Art Collections
Photo: Estel/Klut

In the Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau, the Czech season is entering its grand finale. The exhibition “All the Power of Imagination” (25.02.-9.07.2023) brings together works by around 45 artists of different generations and genres. With František Kupka’s abstract paintings, a monumental work by Magdaléna Jetelová or a light sculpture made of thousands of light bulbs by Krištof Kintera, classical-modern art and contemporary positions meet here in a spectacular way.

On the occasion of the 350th birthday of Rosalba Carriera, the Old Masters Picture Gallery is dedicating the exhibition “Elegant Encounters. Rosalba Carriera – Perfection in Pastel” (9.06.-24.09.2023) to the Venetian pastel painter. Carriera, who was one of the most famous portraitists of her time, celebrated success throughout Europe with her pastel paintings. With 73 pastels, Dresden possesses the world’s largest collection of Carriera’s works. At the same time, a small cabinet exhibition focuses on other women artists who have hitherto led a shadowy existence alongside the great names of art history, even though they were able to assert themselves in a professional field that was dominated by men at the time. In this concentrated show entitled “Out of the Shadows. Women Artists from the 16th to the 18th Century” (12.05.-12.11.2023) focuses on works by Lavinia Fontana, Marietta Robusti, Theresa Concordia Maron and Angelika Kauffmann.

In “Ferne, so nah. Artists, Artists and Their Travels” (8.07.-8.10.2023), over 100 works in the Kupferstich-Kabinett will shed light on the travel experiences of artists from the Renaissance to the early modern period. Artists such as Albrecht Dürer, Angelika Kauffmann and Zacharias Wagner took on hardships to explore distant places or take advantage of professional opportunities and processed their impressions on the road, at the destination and back home in the form of drawings, sketches and prints. The exhibition is an international collaboration with the Katrin Bellinger Collection, London.

From 15 July, the ground floor of the Japanisches Palais will be transformed into the “Museum of Innocence” (15.07.2023-25.02.2024). The exhibition series with further stops in Prague and Munich is a cooperation with the writer and Nobel Prize winner for literature Orhan Pamuk. “The Museum of Innocence” is the title of his novel published in 2008 and at the same time the name of a museum conceived by the author in the heart of Istanbul. With installations, memories and everyday objects, he reconstructed the life of the lovers Kemal and Sibel in Istanbul between 1975 and 1985 on the basis of his book.

Exhibits from the relic treasure of St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague, which has grown and been cared for over centuries, form the centrepiece of the exhibition “Fragments of Memory. The Treasure of St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague” in the Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau (9.09.2023-28.01.2024). Under the theme of faith and remembrance, the relics will be juxtaposed with photographs by Josef Koudelka, the ceramic work of Edmund de Waal and the film “In the Land of Drought” by Julian Rosefeldt.

After the inaugural exhibition, a conference on “The Global GDR. A Transcultural Art History (1949-1990)” as well as academic discussion panels and an accompanying programme on the online platform voices in 2022, the project “KONTRAPUNKTE” will culminate in the exhibition “Revolutionary Romances. Transcultural Art Histories in the GDR” (15.09.2023-7.01.2024) at the Albertinum. The findings provide an expanded view of the GDR’s cultural relations with socialist-oriented countries, especially those of the global South, and their independence movements. In addition to works from the SKD’s holdings, international positions of contemporary art will also be shown.

With around 80 works presented in the exhibition “Timeless Beauty. A History of Still Life” (17.11.2023-28.04.2024), the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister focuses on its own collection, true to the motto of the year. The show rediscovers the genre of still life with masterpieces by painters such as Frans Snyders, Baltasar van der Ast, Jan Davidsz. de Heem, Adriaen van Utrecht and Willem Claesz.

In addition, another part of the newly designed collection presentation opens at the GRASSI Museum für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig (from 9.12.2022).

In 2023, the SKD will also celebrate 300 years of the Green Vault. The event will be accompanied by an intervention by contemporary artist Olaf Nicolai (from 31.01.2023), the presentation “Napoleon and ‘the Faint of Esther'” (11.03.2023-5.06.2023) and Heinrich Tadel’s Stone Cabinet (24.06.-9.10.2023).

In the Museum of Decorative Arts, the exhibition “Plant Fever” opens the season (29.04.-31.10.2023) and the Ethnological Museum Dresden turns its ethnological gaze to Jewish museums.

The SKD’s annual press conference will be framed by a performance by Felix Räuber (formerly of “Polarkreis 18”), who embarked on a musical voyage of discovery through his home state of Saxony for his project “Wie klingt Heimat”. At the Museum of Saxon Folk Art, the visual, audio and film materials from his search for clues will be presented in the exhibition “Wie klingt Heimat? A documentary installation” (25.03.-22.10.2023).

Great events cast their shadows ahead. Caspar David Friedrich would have been 250 years old in 2024. Throughout Germany there will be numerous activities in his honour. The SKD will also celebrate this anniversary with a brilliant festival in the Albertinum, the Kupferstich-Kabinett and the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister.

Marion Ackermann, Director General of the Dresden State Art Collections, thanked not only the Free State of Saxony but also all the funding partners who support the museum network even in times of crisis: “The Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media provides significant funding, which contributes significantly to the strengthening and further development of our museums. We should also mention our sponsors, who have been very committed to the Museum Association for 17 years: our main sponsor, the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe, and Lange Uhren in Glashütte. Through the Czech Season, we have also gained new sponsors such as PRO-ZETA in Prague. Another important partner is the Ernst von Siemens Kunststiftung, whose UKRAINE funding line together with the HERMANN REEMTSMA STIFTUNG I would like to highlight here. Furthermore, we would like to express our sincere thanks to the Kulturstiftung des Bundes, the Kulturstiftung der Länder, the Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste and all other foundations and funding institutions. Last but not least, the private commitment of the members of our friends’ groups is a valuable building block for our work, as is every single donation. Our heartfelt thanks go to all of them.

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Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
Taschenberg 2
01067 Dresden