Research

Brücke-Museum considers itself to be an academic research institution. It initiates and supports projects that are dedicated to the artists’ group Brücke and the museum’s environment, or those projects which explore interdisciplinary and contemporary perspectives on the museum.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions or queries concerning academic matters:
info@bruecke-museum.de
 

Current Research Projects



Brücke in Berlin
Duration July 2022-December 2023

The digitization project Brücke in Berlin follows the traces of the Brücke artists in Berlin’s urban space. The subject matter includes around 200 works on paper, photographs, and archival materials from the Brücke Museum’s collection that are related to Berlin. The project aims to create a simple digital access to these works and to illustrate their location in Berlin’s urban space by integrating maps, georeferencing and contexts. The goal is to create a digital presentation that allows both to trace the life and work of the Brücke artists in Berlin and to rediscover the city of Berlin. For this purpose, a subpage of the Brücke Museum’s online collection is to be created, which can be used to research the Berlin connection of the works. Additional material such as short texts, quotes, historical photographs, audio and video contributions will bring the Berlin of the Brücke artists to life. At the same time, a bridge is to be built to the present day: For this purpose, digital mediation formats are planned, such as an audio city walk in the footsteps of the Brücke. In addition, a part of the collection will be fed into the Berlin History App in order to inspire a broader audience for the Brücke and its artistic work in Berlin. 

Brücke in Berlin

The project is funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe and digiS.

Project management: Isabel Fischer
Academic Researcher: Valentina Bay
Project assistance: Antonia Moldenhauer
Data curation: Michael Hoeppe
Project partner: Research and Competence Center Digitization Berlin (digiS) 
Cooperation partner: Berlin History e.V.


Various Answers: Language, Knowledge, Narration
Duration: January–December 2021

Various Answers is an experimental pilot project that paves the way for different approaches to artworks in the Brücke Museum’s collection. In the online collection, diverse voices introduce individual perspectives on the work—in video, audio, and text formats. A wide variety of questions, topics, and contexts emerge beyond the purview of art-historical disciplines.

(VARIOUS ANSWERS) →

The project Various Answers is developed as part of “dive in. Programme for Digital Interactions” of the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation) with funding by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM) through the NEUSTART KULTUR programme.


Digitisation of the Ethnographica Collection of Karl Schmidt-Rottluff

Duration: January–December 2021

The estate of Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, which is owned by the Karl and Emy Schmidt-Rottluff Foundation at the Brücke-Museum, contains about 100 non-European sculptures and objects collected by him. Little is known about their origin, the circumstances of their acquisition and the historical or current significance of the objects. For the most part, they come from the former German colonial territories and thus refer directly to the German Expressionists’ history of entanglement with the appropriation of material culture in the colonially occupied territories.

In 2021, the Brücke-Museum will dedicate itself to the critical reappraisal and digitisation of these objects. The first steps will be taken to research their provenance. The expertise that has been lacking in the museum so far will be developed together with experts from the regions of origin and decolonial participants. Initial results, new perspectives and questions about the future handling of the collection are to be negotiated transparently and put up for public discussion.

An important step of the project is the digitisation of the objects. They will be presented online on the Wiki Commons platform. Image files and metadata will be available, usable and, above all, editable for all interested parties. The project aims to enable a larger, international public to access and participate in this collection. On the basis of the digitised collection, a process-based interaction and networking project will emerge.

The project is funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe.

Project Coordination: Isabel Fischer
Academic Researcher (focus on networking and content): Dr. Anna Brus
Research Assistant, Karl and Emy Schmidt-Rottluff Foundation: Christiane Remm
Data Curation: Michael Hoeppe
Project Partner: Forschungs- und Kompetenzzentrum Digitalisierung Berlin (digiS)


Reflections: Colonial Legacies at the Brücke-Museum
Duration: September 2020 – December 2021

With the pilot project Reflections: Colonial Legacies at the Brücke-Museum, the museum is responding to the growing demands for European museums to critically reappraise their own colonial histories. Many of the Brücke artists’ works were made in the colonial era; the project will thus launch a nuanced examination of the influences that the history of German colonialism had on the Brücke-Museum’s collection and praxis. This “inreach” programme involves internal museum workshops, training, and public debates that focus on critical discrimination sensitisation, self-reflection, and further education within the institution, while also being a platform for dialogue with people working on decolonisation. The long-term goal is for the discussions initiated during the project to contribute to a revised mission statement and institutional self-image, while at the same time encouraging discrimination-critical perspectives on past curatorial practices, writing and communications, the online collection, and forms of collaboration and art education.

Project concept and coordination: Pegah Byroum-Wand
Project management: Daniela Bystron
Supported by the State of Berlin’s Contemporary History and Memory Culture project fund


Times of Change. Works on paper in the Brücke-Museum from the years 1914-1924
Duration: May–December 2021

With the project Times of Change, the digital collection presentation on the websites of the Brücke-Museum and the DDB will be expanded to include works on paper by the Brücke artists from the years 1914–1924. For the artists, this decade was marked by a series of personal, political and social changes and developments, which were also reflected in their works: the end of the artists’ group and the resulting independent artistic development, the First World War and the beginning of the Weimar Republic, but also their increasing establishment in the cultural scene are reflected in the works from this period.

The aim of the project is to digitally process these central works of the Brücke-Museum and make them available to a broad public. At the same time, connections to important contemporary historical and socially relevant themes and motif complexes can be shown.

The project is being realised within the framework of the funding project “Zielgerichtete Digitalisierungsförderung bei Kultureinrichtungen aus dem Netzwerk der Deutschen Digitalen Bibliothek”, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM) in the NEUSTART KULTUR programme.

Project management: Isabel Fischer
Scientific Assistance: Christiane Remm
Data Curation: Michael Höppe
Project Partner: Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek (DDB)

 


Highlighting Contexts – Finding Connections – Showing Developement
Extension of the digitized collection by watercolours, prints and drawings of the Brücke artists from 1905 to 1913

Duration: January–December 2020

After the paintings of the Brücke artists were digitised in a first step in 2018, the digital collection of the Brücke Museum will now be expanded to include works on paper - watercolours, prints and drawings - from the period 1905 to 1913.

Compared to the popular paintings, the works on paper are often perceived as subordinate – only because they are less well known. Their digitalisation and online presentation is a major contribution to changing this. The works on paper form a large part of the museum’s collection and represent the diversity of techniques, formats and pictorial ideas of the Brücke artists, which can now be directly experienced by the public.

As part of a project funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe and digiS, around 1000 works on paper will be digitised and presented online. For our users of the digital collection, new and sometimes unusual contexts will be revealed, connections made in terms of content and form, and developments of the individual artists will be shown.
 

Project coordination: Isabel Fischer
Project assistance: Christiane Remm
Curator of Data: Michael Höppe
Project partner: Forschungs- und Kompetenzzentrum Digitalisierung Berlin (digiS)




Broadening the Horizon: Investigation of Paper Works from the Collection of Brücke-Museum
Duration: Januar 2020–Juli 2022

Within the framework of an initially one-year project, 130 works on paper will be examined. The focus is on works of art acquired from two German private collections. On Facebook and Instagram we will report on the progress and challenges of the provenance research of drawings and watercolours.

Project management: Lisa Marei Schmidt
Academic assistance: Dr. Nadine Bauer
Supported by the German Lost Art Foundation, Magdeburg


OverseasSurgeriesPrepareSomewhat

Cooperation with weißensee kunsthochschule berlin and Beaux-Arts de Marseille
Duration in the Forest Room of the Brücke Museum: 11 - 16 October 2021

For three semesters, art students from Berlin and Marseille worked together on the subject of painting/landscape, culture/nature and the related actual questions. In their exploration of the motif of the designed landscape and the forest, they sought to tap into the artistic potential and use it to define their own view of the environment. Due to the pandemic, this exchange took place mainly digitally. The cryptic project title OverseasSurgeriesPrepareSomewhat reflects the daily study routine of the last one and a half years. The video conferencing application Jitsi randomly generated this title for the students’ digital meeting place.

From 11 to 16 October, students from Berlin and Marseille will use the newly built Waldraum (Forest Room) of the Brücke-Museum and the surrounding forest as a studio. They will work directly in nature, testing out possibilities of artistic practice and presentation in the open air. On Saturday, 16 October from 2–5 pm, which is the last day of the project, the group invites you to public tour in the garden of the Brücke-Museum.

Project coordination
weißensee kunsthochschule Berlin: Friederike Feldmann and Alex Wagner
Beaux-Arts de Marseille: Katharina Schmidt, Jean Baptiste
Sauvage
Brücke-Museum: Daniela Bystron, curator for outreach / Irene Bretscher and Anna Budniewski, assistance

Students weißensee kunsthochschule: Fadi Aljabour, Mila Asmira cano, Hannah Bohnen, Paula Breuer und Stefan Pfattner, Valentin Cafuk, Sofia Efremenko, Abie Franklin, Gema Gubianas, Leo Elia Jung, Christopher Krause, Lukas Luzius Leichtle, Janine Muckermann, Helena Ommert, Shira Orion, Soorena Petgar, Ximena Ferrer Pizarro, Robin Rapp, Katharina Reinsbach, Devi Sund Rojo, Keanu Sapadi, Jenna Seedorf, Paul Schlipf, Lili Theilen and Lars Unkenholz.

Students Beaux-Arts de Marseille: Drissia Bourlier, Sounaina Devi Bunma, Côme Calmettes, Mathilde Craquelin, Neïla Czermak, Marine Douet, Léo Moya, Cassandra Naigre, David’ohm Ndong-Nsi-Eya, Christophe Perreaud, Avel Plégat, Eva Reinert, Lucie Seta and Pajot Vincent.

OverseasSurgeriesPrepareSomewhat is a cooperation with the weißensee kunsthochschule berlin, with Beaux-Arts de Marseille and the Brücke-Museums.

The cooperation is supported by the Franco-German Youth Office.


Systematic Examination of the Provenance of Paintings, Sculptures, Stained Glass and a Drawing from Brücke-Museum
Duration: November 2018–October 2019

During this one-year project, forty-two paintings, fifteen sculptures, two stained-glass works and one drawing will be examined related to their provenance between the years of 1933 to 1945. This project will be followed by further research of the works on paper and the collection’s ethnographic objects. An intensive exchange with other provenance researchers and the integration of the research results into the museums records and its’ work are the core aims of the project. Throughout the project updates will be published on Facebook and Instagram.

Project management: Lisa Marei Schmidt
Academic assistance: Dr. Nadine Bauer
Supported by the German Lost Art Foundation, Magdeburg


Digitisation of All the Paintings at Brücke-Museum
Duration: April 2018–February 2019

As part of a project funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe, Brücke-Museum has digitised the entire collection of paintings, comprising around 300 works, and will soon make them available online. After the project has been completed, the data will also be made available via the German Digital Library (DDB).

Project management: Lisa Marei Schmidt
Project coordination: Jennifer Rasch
Project assistance: Michael Höppe
Project partner: Forschungs- und Kompetenzzentrum Digitalisierung Berlin (digiS)


Sometimes Unanswerable: Student-Centred Research at Brücke-Museum
Duration: September 2018–August 2019

Of what relevance is the artists’ group Brücke today? How can these artists and their work relate to the everyday life of young people? Are there social and political analogies to be made with the present? How can Brücke art be recontextualised in today’s Berlin? What previously unexplored perspectives can be found in the museum? And how can young people become involved and contribute with their questions, ideas and points of view to the museum and its works?

For this project, we use a process-oriented, student-centred, participatory approach which is closely aligned to the museum’s own practice: conducting research, asking questions, seeking methods and strategies to suggest possible answers, inviting experts and holding interviews. Sometimes Unanswerable deliberately begins with asking young people personal questions related to theis biographical and cultural backgrounds, interests and tendencies. Support is provided by museum staff, teachers and experts invited by the students themselves.

Project management: Daniela Bystron
Project assistance: Nora Hogrefe
Artistic project direction: Markus Strieder, Karen Winzer
School supervision: Grit Wöhlert
Cooperation partner: Kurt-Tucholsky-Schule, Berlin

Sponsored by Berlin Project Funds for Cultural Education.