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460,000 visitors to the Schleswig-Holstein state museums

Contemporary, more feminine, more international - visitors to the State Museums at Gottorf Castle can look forward to exhibitions by renowned artists in the coming year. One exhibition stands out in particular - with the potential for a new visitor record.

View of the Museum Schloss Gottorf. Photo.aussiedlerbote.de
View of the Museum Schloss Gottorf. Photo.aussiedlerbote.de

Annual balance sheet - 460,000 visitors to the Schleswig-Holstein state museums

The State Museum of Art and Cultural History at Gottorf Castle wants to position itself even more internationally with its exhibitions in the coming year and also show more female positions in contemporary art. "This is also a statement," said Thorsten Sadowsky, Scientific Director of the Landesmuseen Foundation, at Gottorf Castle in Schleswig on Wednesday. And so, for Sadowsky and his fellow board member Svenja Kluckow, the highlight exhibition is the one featuring works by Portuguese star artist Joana Vasconcelos from May 1 to October 27, 2024. Vasconcelos has exhibited at Versailles Palace, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, for example. One of her artworks has even made it onto a special edition two-euro coin in her native Portugal. This "Red Independent Heart" will also be on display at Gottorf.

Opulent floating textile installations

In total, the exhibition "Le Chateau des Valkyries" - the artist's most extensive museum show in Germany to date - will feature eleven expansive installations from the years 2000 to 2022. Vasconcelos sees herself as a decidedly feminist artist, said Sadowsky. In her often oversized, colorful works, Vasconcelos often uses traditional craft techniques such as crocheting, sewing and lace-making and mixes them with objects from everyday life. One of the main themes of the Gottorf exhibition will be her colorful giant Valkyries. According to Sadowsky, these opulent floating textile installations inspire visitors all over the world and - in keeping with Gottorf Castle - display Baroque exuberance. In addition to the riding stables and the cross stables, some of the castle's historical rooms will also form part of the exhibition. A work by Vasconcelo will also be on display at the Iron Art Casting Museum in Büdelsdorf. According to the Landesmuseen Foundation, the show has the potential to attract a record number of visitors.

Conceptual art and video installations

In addition, 25 illuminated globes by conceptual artist Ingo Günther will be on display in the Globushaus for an entire season from March 28 to October 27 next year. In his "WorldProcessor" project, Günther, who lives in New York, uses the globe as a medium to provide information about global phenomena. For example, he visualizes refugee camps, fuel consumption, electrification, social tensions and ecological connections. In total, more than a thousand such works have been created since 1988. A small selection is displayed on the first floor of the Globushaus in relation to the Gottorf Globe. "The Eurocentric view of the 17th century thus meets the global view of a cosmopolitan of our time," it says.

Kehinde Wiley, reportedly one of the most well-known and internationally successful American artists of the present day, will also be represented next year with his video installation "Ship of Fools" (May 1 to November 3). The video artwork continues the "Performance History" series that began this year. At the end of the year and in 2025 (December 6, 2024 to March 2, 2025), Schloss Gottorf will dedicate the show "Generalprobe" to the artist Jens Ferdinand Willemsen (1863-1958), who is little known in this country but celebrated in his native Denmark.

2023 visitor numbers return to pre-corona levels

This year, more than 460,000 people visited the museums of the Schleswig-Holstein State Museums Foundation. According to the figures, this means that the level of the pre-corona year 2019 has been reached again. Last year, a good 434,000 visitors were counted, in 2021 around 420,000.

The Haithabu Viking Museum also proved to be a crowd-puller in 2023 with more than 180,000 visitors (2022: 174,000). Almost 100,000 visitors - the highest number since before the pandemic - visited the Museum Island Schloss Gottorf in Schleswig and enjoyed exhibitions such as the one on the life's work of Christo & Jeanne-Claude and that of award-winning photographer Samuel. They were also able to immerse themselves in the video art of Yinka Shonibare and Voluspa Jarpa in the "Performing History" series.

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Source: www.stern.de

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