6060 | 2009




| video |

The exhibition "60 Jahre. 60 Werke" (60 years, 60 artworks) presented key works of art from the Federal Republic of Germany in their respective political and cultural context. The exhibition was shown at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Federal Republic of Germany.

For each year since the founding of the federal republic in 1949, the curators chose one outstanding work of art. The works by artists including Joseph Beuys, Jörg Immendorff, Georg Baselitz and Neo Rauch were traditionally presented in the museum space.

In addition, two media augmented rooms provided in-depth information on the individual works of art, contextualizing them in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. Both rooms covered an overview of 30 years each.

Each decade was represented by a touch sensitive table, with detailed information on the ten selected works of art. By touching the table surface, visitors could access information on the exhibited works, art movements and key events in the art world at the time.

On the adjacent wall, monitors showed three-minute short films from historic news archives summarizing the most important news in politics, industry, sport and culture.

On the other wall »Zeitbilder« had been exhibited. Visitors were confronted with a row of empty black frames with captions underneath them. These captions described photographs that form part of the collective memory. The "images" included that of the East German soldier Conrad Schumann jumping over the barbed-wire of the newly built Berlin wall discarding his rifle in 1961, and that of the screaming, naked Vietnamese girl running away from the napalm bombs falling on her village in 1972. Denied the sight of these epochal images, visitors were challenged to draw them up from their own memories.