It is well known that by far the largest part of the museum inventory is stored in the depot. In order to be “rediscovered” when it suits politically, socially, culturally or even purely economically. Just as the grandiose late Middle Ages or early Renaissance collections of the Berlin State Museums recently experienced a veritable rebirth in the Picture Gallery Hall, or the Lenbach House in Munich in particular is able to show the obviously fascinating “Art and Life” exhibition, largely from its own holdings.
But one also learns here that the absurd idea of “zero hour” has had a much stronger impact on museums and especially their exhibitions than is generally thought: since the 1890s, entire epochs or regions have repeatedly been excluded from the image of art , brought their works to the depot, only to be “rediscovered” there, sometimes decades later.
Art from the National Socialist era, socialist state art, Imperial Wilhelmine art, that of the Scandinavian countries (unless it is Munch-Symbolist or Gallen-Kallela-national-romantic), the art of Eastern Europe fell under the ban, unless it was exactly avant-garde is, the moderns of North and South America, etc. pp.
And again and again one discovers veritable cleansing campaigns behind these exclusions – when, for example, in 1937 the Berlin curators of the Gemäldegalerie banished Dutch paintings that appeared too “Italian” to the depot, making the mixture of “Romanesque” and “Germanic” ideas politically opportune invisible. After the Second World War, when the Montanunion elevated this mixture to the ideal of Europe, the Utrecht Caravaggists were suddenly highly topical again.
Nevertheless, there is an antidote to this falsification of perspective by the curators: the maximum opening of the depots. By digitizing the inventory, but also quite physically. Washington, London, Scandinavia, Rotterdam show it: Even huge depots can be opened to the general public. And thus open up new, self-determined perspectives on the world. There, the audience does not have to make do with the “rediscovery” of what was hidden from curators concerned about taste or historical knowledge.
Nicholas Bernau has been involved with art and architecture for many years.
