CAMBRIDGE, MASS.- This fall, the Harvard Art Museums present an unprecedented look at German art since 1980. Featuring artists from different generations and diverse backgrounds, the exhibition Made in Germany? Art and Identity in a Global Nation complicates notions of German identity, especially the idea of ethnic and cultural homogeneity in a country that is second only to the United States as a destination for immigrants from around the world. The exhibition is on view September 13, 2024–January 5, 2025, in the Special Exhibitions Gallery and adjacent University Research Gallery on Level 3 of the Harvard Art Museums.
The accompanying print catalogue, the first of its kind published in English, includes essays by interdisciplinary scholars who address questions of nation and belonging in contemporary German art and society. A broad range of public programs—including an in-person opening celebration featuring Berlin-based artist Henrike Naumann on Thursday, September 12, at 6pm; plus gallery talks, tours, a film program, and events in partnership with the Goethe-Institut Boston—will run throughout the duration of the exhibition.
Made in Germany? offers a range of reflections on German national identity, which has largely been shaped by labor migration following World War II, the unification of East and West Germany in 1990, and the influx of refugees to the country since 2015. As the pointedly interrogative title suggests, the exhibition asks, rather than offers ready answers to, the question of who or what represents Germany today. Race, migration, labor, history, and memory are at the forefront of this inquiry into German identity. The works on view often focus attention not solely on racial, ethnic, or religious diversity, but on marginalized groups at the very edges of German society: the aging, the economically disadvantaged, and the unhoused.
Made in Germany? contributes to wide-ranging debates on diversity, nationalism, and social change in the face of migration and globalization; it frames discussions on racial violence, right-wing populism, and ethnically defined national identity—issues that are resonating not only in Germany but also in the United States today.
The artists featured in the exhibition span several generations, and their works—often made and remade over an extended period—address German history and identity through film, video, photography, painting, printmaking, drawing, collage, and installation. Women, East Germans, long-term residents, recent citizens, and individuals with a “migration background” are represented among the 23 artists in the exhibition: Nevin Aladağ, Sibylle Bergemann, Cana Bilir-Meier, Marc Brandenburg, Kota Ezawa, Isa Genzken, Hans Haacke, Candida Höfer, Yngve Holen, Henrike Naumann, Pınar Öğrenci, Hans-Christian Schink, Cornelia Schleime, Ngozi Schommers, Gundula Schulze Eldowy, Katharina Sieverding, Hito Steyerl, Gabriele Stötzer, Sung Tieu, Rosemarie Trockel, Corinne Wasmuht, Ulrich Wüst, and Želimir Žilnik.
Made in Germany? is curated by Lynette Roth, Daimler Curator of the Busch-Reisinger Museum, and Peter Murphy, Stefan Engelhorn Curatorial Fellow in the Busch-Reisinger Museum (2022–25), with Bridget Hinz, Senior Curatorial Assistant for Special Exhibitions and Publications, Division of Modern and Contemporary Art, Harvard Art Museums.
Supplemented by key loans, the exhibition showcases recent acquisitions made by the Busch-Reisinger Museum, one of the Harvard Art Museums’ three constituent museums. The Busch-Reisinger Museum is uniquely positioned as the only museum in North America devoted to the art of German-speaking Europe from the Middle Ages to the present day.
“This exhibition represents the latest in the Busch-Reisinger Museum’s ongoing commitment to the study and promotion of German art while also reflecting on the concerns of our time,” said Roth. “During the COVID-19 pandemic, in response to the concurrent reckoning with racial and social justice in the United States, I initiated a series of conversations with artists and scholars about issues of art and identity on Instagram. The dialogues there helped refine the thinking behind the exhibition and the accompanying catalogue.”
The range of conversations with artists, scholars, curators, and writers exploring narratives around nation, race, gender, and identity in German art can be found on the Busch-Reisinger’s Instagram (@Busch_Hall) as well as in a special Made in Germany? playlist on YouTube, which is in development.
“It’s exciting to see the Busch-Reisinger collection continue to grow in diverse and unexpected ways,” said Murphy. “The works we have recently acquired are not only pertinent to the questions of the exhibition, they also indicate the trajectory of the museum and its investment in new artists, new media, and new ideas.”
Highlights on display across five gallery spaces include Hito Steyerl’s 1998 film Die leere Mitte (The Empty Centre), about the various borders that have existed in Berlin’s city center since the 18th century; Katharina Sieverding’s monumental pigment-on-metal print Deutschland wird deutscher XLI/92 (Germany Becomes More German XLI/92) from 1992, an icon of contemporary German art; Ulrich Wüst’s hand-crafted leporello (accordion book) Hausbuch (House Book) (1989–2010), a visual inventory comprising 172 photographs of objects the artist found in East German homes over the course of 20 years after unification; Sung Tieu’s “deconstructed readymade” installation Untitled (Everything or Nothing) (2021); three photographs from Nevin Aladağ’s ongoing portrait series Best Friends, which the artist began in 2012; and Corinne Wasmuht’s large-scale 2009 painting 50 U Heinrich-Heine-Str., of a bustling city thoroughfare based on the artist’s own photographs as well as imagery culled from the Internet. A major loan is East German-born Henrike Naumann’s Ostalgie (2019), a room-sized installation addressing the immediate post-Wall period in Germany’s “new” federal states.
Hans Haacke’s poster artwork Wir (alle) sind das Volk (We [all] are the people) (2003/24), which he designed to repeat the title phrase in a total of 12 languages, is available for free in the exhibition galleries. Haacke encourages replication and dissemination of this poster as a call to embrace cultural and ethnic diversity, and visitors are encouraged to further spread the message by displaying it in their schools, workplaces, homes, and neighborhoods.
Two recently acquired sculptures, displayed elsewhere in the museums, are also part of the exhibition: Ngozi Schommers’s Commuters (2022), a work composed of two rolled-up sleeping bags illuminated by a portable light, alluding to the housing and refugee crises in Europe (located in the stairwell on the Lower Level); and Yngve Holen’s aluminum Butterfly (2016), which is made from the same material as Frankfurt Airport’s high-security fences and thus juxtaposes concepts commonly associated with the insect—freedom, metamorphosis, and natural beauty—with the control and restriction of movement (located in the stairwell on Level 5).
Additionally, a special Made in Germany? playlist featuring music from the 1980s to today is available on Spotify, extending the experience of the exhibition.
