Symposia

Wednesday, November 12, 2025

How did a small group of radical painters become the most popular art movement of modern times? Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, and their fellow Impressionists not only changed the way people saw light and color—they also created a network of friends, patrons, and collectors that carried their works around the world. Writers such as Émile Zola and Octave Mirbeau supported them with influential reviews. New groups of buyers were drawn to this revolutionary approach to painting. Some, like department store owner Ernest Hoschedé and opera singer Jean-Baptiste Faure, began collecting Impressionist art on a large scale. The Paris World’s Fairs and Paul Durand-Ruel’s galleries in Paris and New York gave the Impressionists international exposure.

The exhibition Networks of Impressionism is dedicated to the web of relationships that enabled this art movement to succeed. It highlights the private Parisian salons and yacht clubs as meeting places for the avant-garde, and examines the commitment of collectors and promoters in the United States and Germany.

To mark the tenth anniversary of the Museum Barberini, the exhibition brings together ten works from the Hasso Plattner Collection with 70 Impressionist paintings from major museum collections, such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the National Gallery in London, and the Museum of Western Art in Tokyo. 

The symposium is held in preparation for the exhibition that will be on view from November 7, 2026, to February 21, 2027, at Museum Barberini.

The speakers:

• Dr. Ortrud Westheider, Museum Barberini, Potsdam
• Prof. Dr. Martin Schieder, Universität Leipzig
• Dr. Gloria Groom, The Art Institute of Chicago
• Dr. Sylvie Patry, Musée d’Orsay und Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris
• Dr. Johanne Hoppe, Filmmuseum Potsdam
• Linda Hacka, Museum Barberini, Potsdam

Wednesday, December 3, 2025

In the late 19th century, Barcelona gave rise to a unique cultural movement that embraced not only the visual arts and architecture but also music and literature: Catalan Modernism. For the first time in Germany, an exhibition is dedicated to this fascinating period, presenting around 140 works that capture the vibrant metropolis and its cultural scene between 1880 and 1914. Alongside renowned figures such as Antoni Gaudí and Pablo Picasso, the show highlights artists still little known in Germany, including Ramon Casas, Santiago Rusiñol, Isidre Nonell, Joaquim Mir, and Hermenegildo Anglada-Camarasa. In their quest for a distinctive artistic identity, these protagonists drew on diverse influences—from Catalan medieval tradition and the Spanish Old Masters to the Parisian avant-garde and European Art Nouveau, as well as from the social and political tensions of the modern

city and the landscapes of Mallorca as an Arcadian counterimage. With loans from the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya and the Círculo del Liceo, Barcelona; the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Es Baluard Museu d’Art Contemporani de Palma; the Colección Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza; and other international public and private collections.

The symposium is held in preparation for the exhibition that will be on view from October 23, 2026, to February 21, 2027, at the Kunsthalle Munich, and from March 20 to June 20, 2027, at the Museum Barberini.

The speakers:

• Dr. Ortrud Westheider, Museum Barberini, Potsdam
• Dr. Roger Diederen, Kunsthalle München

• Dr. Nerina Santorius, Museum Barberini, Potsdam

• Carlos Alonso Pérez-Fajardo, Madrid

• Dr. Franziska Stöhr, Kunsthalle München

• Ignasi Domènech Vives, Museus de Sitges

• Prof. Dr. Jenny Haase-Knöpfle, Universität Potsdam

• Nadia Hernández Henche, Barcelona

• Megan Fontanella, Guggenheim New York

Wednesday, December 11, 2024

Max Liebermann sparked the first avant-garde movement in Germany with his impressionist paintings. As a collector and promoter of French Impressionism and as the president of the Berlin Secession, he brought a sense of internationalism to the art world in the nationally focused German Empire. Unlike France, with its undisputed art capital, Paris, art in Germany was influenced by many centers; aside from Berlin, Impressionism also developed in Dresden, Hamburg, Karlsruhe, Leipzig, Munich, and Stuttgart. The exhibition Impressionism in Germany: Max Liebermann and His Time explores the diversity of themes and styles between 1870 and 1930. It features not only canonized painters like Lovis Corinth, Max Liebermann, and Max Slevogt, but also lesser-known artists like Maria Slavona and Lesser Ury.

The symposium is held in preparation for the exhibition that will be on view from October 3, 2025 to February 8, 2026 at the Museum Frieder Burda and at the Museum Barberini from February 28 to June 7, 2026.

The speakers will be:

• Dr. Alexander Bastek, Museum Behnhaus Drägerhaus, Lübeck
• Dr. Karoline Feulner, Landesmuseum Mainz
• Barbara Schaefer, Walraff-Richartz Museum & Fondation Corboud, Cologne
• Prof. Dr. Lucy Wasensteiner, Universität Bonn
• Dr. Ortrud Westheider, Museum Barberini, Potsdam

Wednesday, May 15 to Thursday, May 16, 2024

On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Impressionism, the Museum Barberini invites you to the two-day conference Impressionism Today: Exhibiting, Researching, Investigating to present the current state of research.

150 years ago, 30 artists came together in Paris and exhibited their works in the studio of photographer Félix Nadar from April 15 to May 15, 1874, away from the official Academy exhibitions. This circle of artists included Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Berthe Morisot and Alfred Sisley - pioneers of French modernism, all of whom are represented by outstanding works in the Hasso Plattner Collection.

The speakers will be:

• Dr. Alexander Bastek, Museum Behnhaus Drägerhaus, Lübeck
• Prof. Dr. Claudia Blümle, Humboldt University of Berlin
• Dr. Karoline Feulner, Landesmuseum Mainz
• Linda Hacka, Museum Barberini, Potsdam
• Dr. Dorothee Hansen, Kunsthalle Bremen
• Felicitas Klein, Berlin
• Robert Knöll, Basel
• Ana Nasyrova, Old National Gallery, Berlin
• Dr. Michael Philipp, Museum Barberini, Potsdam
• Valentina Plotnikova, Humboldt University, Berlin
• Barbara Schaefer, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud, Cologne
• Prof. Martin Schieder, University of Leipzig
• Rahel Schrohe, Humboldt University of Berlin
• Dr. Lucy Wasensteiner, Liebermann-Villa am Wannsee, Berlin
• Dr. Ortrud Westheider, Museum Barberini, Potsdam
• Dr. Daniel Zamani, Museum Barberini, Potsdam

Wednesday, May 22, 2024

With Camille Pissarro, an outsider became a central figure within the Impressionist collective. Born in the Caribbean, he came to France in 1855, sensed the anti-academic upsurge in painting, and attracted like-minded people. With their revolutionary style of painting, they founded the Impressionist movement. Pissarro also experimented with the pointillism of the younger artists and was the only painter to take part in all eight Impressionist exhibitions in Paris. With around 80 landscapes, cityscapes, still lifes, and figure paintings from about 50 international collections, the exhibition Camille Pissarro: Impressionist Imagery gives a broad overview of his entire oeuvre and shows the social utopian implications of his art.

The symposium precedes the retrospective, which will be on display at the Museum Barberini in Potsdam from June 14 to September 28, 2025. The cooperation partner is the Denver Art Museum, where the exhibition will be shown from October 26, 2025, to February 8, 2026.

The speakers will be: 

• Claire Durand-Ruel, Paris

• Dr. Clarisse Fava-Piz, Denver Art Museum

• Colin Harrison, Ashmolean Museum of Art, Oxford

• Dr. Christoph Heinrich, Denver Art Museum

• Dr. Ortrud Westheider, Museum Barberini, Potsdam

• Dr. Daniel Zamani, Museum Barberini, Potsdam

Wednesday, June 12, 2024

The unicorn has stimulated the imagination like no other animal. It has been documented in many cultures for centuries. Its fascination continues to this day. The mythical animal is a multi-facetted symbol that emanates associative energy. Tracks of the unicorn can be found in Christian and non-European art, in natural science and medicine and in a wide range of symbols. Studying the iconography of the unicorn invites reflection on fantasy, world knowledge, ambivalences and projections.

The conference prepares the exhibition Unicorn: The Mythical Beast in Art, which will be on display at the Museum Barberini in Potsdam from October 25, 2025 to February 1, 2026 and at the Musée de Cluny in Paris from March 16 to June 28, 2026.

The speakers will be:

• Adrien Bossard, Musée départemental des arts asiatique, Nice
• Béatrice de Chancel-Bardelot, Musée de Cluny, Paris
• Barbara Drake Boehm, New York
• Dr. Michael Philipp, Museum Barberini, Potsdam
• Annabelle Ténéze, Louvre Lens
• PD Dr. Stefan Trinks, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Seventeenth Conference, December 7, 2023

Around 1905, a new generation of French artists experimented with explosive color. The painters became known as Fauvists or “wild beasts”. Maurice de Vlaminck identified with this attribution like no other member of the group, staunchly propagating the self-image as a modern artist rebel. Featuring around 70 loans from more than 40 international collections, the exhibition provides a wide-ranging overview of Vlaminck’s entire artistic output. The focus lies on his Fauvist landscape paintings, with which he became one of the most influential precursors of Expressionism. The exhibition is the first comprehensive retrospective of Vlaminck’s oeuvre in Germany.

The conference prepares the show, which will be on view at the Museum Barberini in Potsdam from September 14, 2024, to January 12, 2025. Cooperation partner is the Von der Heydt-Museum in Wuppertal, where the show will be on display from February 8 to May 18, 2025.

The speakers are: 

• Heinz Widauer, Art historian, Wien
• Prof. Matthias Krüger, Ludwig-Maximilians- Universität München
• Lisa Smit, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
• Dr. Daniel Zamani, Museum Barberini, Potsdam
• Dr. Anna Storm, Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal
• Maïthé Vallès-Bled, Art historian, Le Bosc

Sixteenth Conference, October 26, 2022

Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) painted large-format nudes that were considered scandalous and made him famous. The exhibition Modigliani: Modern Gazes presents portraits and nudes by the artist from a new perspective, examining for the first time the artists from the cosmopolitan Parisian scene who sat for him. The exhibition also looks at Modigliani’s series of women with short hair wearing men’s clothing, which he began painting in 1915, in connection with women’s liberation during World War I. In this context, the scandalous nudes against a red background can be seen in a new light. Modigliani’s contemporaries in Paris and his development in context of European modernism are also integrated into the exhibition: while his depictions of stage and dance, derived from studying the work of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, led Modigliani to paint masks and figurines, his portraits, which were inspired by Paul Cézanne, anticipate Picasso’s Neoclassicism as well as Neue Sachlichkeit (New Obectivity) in Germany of the 1920s

The symposium is held in preparation for the exhibition that will be on view at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart from November 24, 2023, to March 17, 2024, and at the Museum Barberini from March 27 to August 18, 2024. 

The speakers are:

• Cécile Girardeau (Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris)
• Dr. Victoria Noel Johnson (Rome)
• Dr. Peter Kropmanns (Cologne/Paris)
• Dr. Nathalie Lachmann (Staatsgalerie Stuttgart)
• Prof. Dr. Beate Söntgen, (Leuphana University Lüneburg)
• Dr. Ortrud Westheider (Museum Barberini, Potsdam)

Fifteenth Conference, June 22, 2022

Landscape painting originated in the Netherlands. The realism of the Old Masters of the 17th century remained the standard. With open-air painting developed in France, the Dutch painters of the 19th century received new impulses. The Hague School captured the changing light moods of nature in high cloudy skies, streaked with many shades of gray. Beginning in the 1880s, urban landscapes and modern life emerged as themes in interplay with Impressionist influences from France, before the unleashing of color dominated painting with Pointillism. The exhibition brings together around 100 works by some 40 artists, including Johan Barthold Jongkind, Vincent van Gogh, Jacoba van Heemskerkc, and Piet Mondrian. The symposium prepares the exhibition, which will be on view at Museum Barberini from July 8 to October 22, 2023.

The speakers are:

• Dr. Ortrud Westheider, Museum Barberini

• Frouke van Dijke, Kunstmuseum Den Haag

• Mayken Jonkman, RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History, Den Haag 

• Renske Suijver, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam & The Mesdag Collection, Den Haag

• Jeroen Kapelle, RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History, Den Haag

• Renske Cohen Tervaert, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo

• Dr. Michael Philipp, Museum Barberini, Potsdam

Claude Monet’s 1872 painting Impression, Sunrise, which gave the movement of Impressionism its name, will be celebrating its 150th birthday in 2022. The painting, whose compositional focal point is formed by the red disc of the rising sun, is the starting point for an exhibition dedicated to the representation of the sun from antiquity to the present. The sun has a central role in European art as a symbol or personification of divine powers, as a motivating element in mythological scenes such as the Fall of Icarus, as a carrier of mood in landscape paintings, and as a basis for the intensification of color in painting of the Classical Modern period. 

This conference prepares the exhibition which will be on view from September 15, 2022, to January 29, 2023, at the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris and from February 25 to June 11, 2023, at the Museum Barberini.

The speakers are:

• Dr. Michael Philipp, (Museum Barberini, Potsdam)
• Prof. Dr. Marilynn S. Olson und Prof. Dr. Donald W. Olson (Texas State University)
• Prof. Dr. Nils Büttner (Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Stuttgart)
• Prof. Dr. Hendrik Ziegler (Philipps-Universität Marburg)
• Prof. Dr. Michael E. Zimmermann (Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt)
• Marianne Mathieu (Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris)

13th Symposium, October 13, 2021 – Online –

After the Second World War, Western painting took a completely new direction. With Abstract Expressionism in the US and Art Informel in Western Europe, a young generation of artists turned away from the dominant styles of the interwar period: Instead of figurative representation or geometric abstraction, they pursued an impetuously expressive approach to form, color and material. As a signifier of individual freedom, the spontaneous artistic gesture took on symbolic charge. The exhibition explores the parallel development of the two sister movements in the context of a vibrant transatlantic dialogue and exchange.

The conference prepares the exhibition, which will be on view at the Museum Barberini from June 4 to September 25, 2022.

The speakers are:

• Jeremy Lewison (art historian, London
)
• Dr. Grazina Subelyte (
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice)
• Dr. Daniel Zamani (Museum Barberini, Potsdam)
• Kay Heymer (Kunstpalast Düsseldorf)
• Dr. David Anfam (art historian, London)
   

12th Symposium, September 1, 2021 – Online –

In the 19th century, numerous photographers chose the same motifs as Impressionist painters: the forest of Fontainebleau, the cliffs of Étretat or the modern metropolis of Paris. They, too, studied the changing light, seasons and weather conditions. From its inception, photographers pursued artistic ambitions, as evidenced by their experimentation with composition and perspective, by means of various technical procedures. Until the First World War, the relationship between photography and painting was characterized both by competition and mutual influence. The exhibition examines these interactions and illuminates the development of the new medium from the 1850s to its establishment as an autonomous art form around 1900.

The Twelfth Conference at the Museum Barberini is being held in order to prepare the exhibition, which itself will be on view from February 12 until May 8, 2022.

The speakers are:

• Dr. Ulrich Pohlmann (Münchner Stadtmuseum and curator of the exhibition)
• Dominique de Font-Réaulx (Musée du Louvre, Paris)
• Dr. Esther Ruelfs (Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg)
• Dr. Monika Faber (Photoinstitut Bonartes Wien)
• PD Dr. Matthias Krüger (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)
• Prof. Dr. Stiegler (Universität Konstanz)

11th Symposium, November 14, 2019

As the leading European art metropolis, beginning in the 1860s, Paris attracted Russian painters such as Ilia Repin from the academies of Moscow and St. Petersburg. They encountered the works of Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir in the French capital and were inspired by the subject matter and style of the French Impressionists. Upon returning to Russia, they painted outdoors and sought to depict the fleetingness of a moment in their depictions of everyday Russian life. In this way, the genres of landscape and interior painting became established in Russia. Even later painters such as Natalia Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov, and Kazimir Malevich developed their new art from the Impressionist study of light. They considered themselves Impressionists before founding the Russian avant-garde with expressive Rayonism and nonrepresentational Suprematism after 1910. 
 
The symposium was organized in collaboration with the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, in preparation for the exhibition at the Museum Barberini. Speakers at the symposium:

• Olga Atroshchenko (State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow) 
• Rosalind Polly Blakesley (University of Cambridge)
• Maria Kokkori (The Art Institute of Chicago) 
• Susanne Strätling (University of Potsdam) 
• Irina Vakar (State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow) 
• Tatiana Yudenkova (State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow)

10th Symposium, June 6, 2019

In seventeenth-century Amsterdam, the Middle and Far East were not only present as an idea. Trade with Asia, Africa, and the Levant brought exotic goods, publications, and new knowledge to the Netherlands. Rembrandt and other painters of the Golden Age drew inspiration for their art from this cultural diversity. However, the dark side of the encounters between East and West, including slavery, trade wars, and the loss of sailors, was not depicted. Foreignness was an appealing contrast to the Dutch lifestyle, but it hardly aroused deeper empathy. While this was the case with Rembrandt and his contemporaries, the exhibition encourages visitors to reflect on the fact that this view has not changed in many parts of the Western world.  
 
The symposium was held in preparation for the exhibition that will run at the Kunstmuseum Basel from October 31, 2020, to February 14, 2021, and then at the Museum Barberini from March 13 to June 27, 2021. Speakers at the symposium: 

• Roelof van Gelder (Amsterdam) 
• Jan de Hond (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) 
• Dr. Michael Philipp (Museum Barberini, Potsdam) 
• Gary Schwartz, guest curator of the exhibition (Maarssen, the Netherlands) 
• Erik Spaans (Amsterdam) 
• Arnoud Vrolijk (University Library, Leiden)

9th Symposium, January 16, 2019 
 
The concept of “place” was key to the artistic vision of Claude Monet (1840–1926). This is where light, which is dependent on the weather, the seasons, and the time of day, plays out over a landscape. Monet explored the fleeting effects of atmospheric phenomena—the layer between him and his motif. He continually sought out topographies that were challenging to capture in paint. The symposium investigated Monet’s work in regard to his choice of places and his awareness of them. 
 
The symposium was organized in collaboration with the Denver Art Museum, where the exhibition Claude Monet: Truth of Nature was held from October 20, 2019, to February 2, 2020. Speakers at the symposium: 

• Marianne Mathieu (Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris) 
• Dr. James H. Rubin (Stony Brook University, New York) 
• George T.M. Shackelford (Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth) 
• Prof. Dr. Richard Thomson (The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh College of Art) 
• Prof. Paul Tucker (University of Massachusetts, Boston) 
• Dr. Daniel Zamani (Museum Barberini, Potsdam)

January 25, 2019 
 
Held from November 17, 2018, to February 17, 2019, the exhibition Olympian Gods: From the Dresden Sculpture Collection at the Museum Barberini presented ancient masterpieces that could not be shown at the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden due to renovation work. Their new permanent location in the renovated Semperbau in Dresden was reopened in the spring of 2020. The symposium was organized in cooperation with the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden and focused on the tradition of collecting and presenting works from classical antiquity. The symposium also honored Kordelia Knoll for the many years she served as director of the Dresden Collection of Antiquities. 

Speakers at the symposium: 

• Norbert Eschbach (Universität Gießen) 
• Dr. Stephan Koja (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden) 
• Dr. Claudia Kryza-Gersch (Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen Dresden) 
• Dr. Joachim Raeder (Kunsthalle Kiel)
• Prof. Dr. Andreas Scholl (Ales Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) 
• Saskia Wetzig (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden)

September 19, 2019 
 
Archives safeguard society’s collective memory and are essential for the future of art-historical research. Access to archived information is of central importance for research on restitution and provenance, for the preservation of cultural heritage, and for supervision of artist estates. Digitalization now makes it possible to systematize and network archived information all over the world, giving scholars and researchers easier access to much-needed material. The international conference of the Freie Universität Berlin in cooperation with the Wildenstein Plattner Institute, New York, the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), The Hague, and the Museum Barberini, Potsdam, presented exemplary archival discoveries, raised awareness of insufficiently used archives, emphasized the importance of linking archives, and examined the resources that are available today. 

Speakers at the symposium: 

• Vivian Endicott Barnett (New York) 
• Christina Bartosh (University of Vienna) 
• Christian Bartz (Hasso Plattner Institut, Potsdam)
• Jane Bramwell (Tate, London) 
• Sophie Derrot (INHA, Paris) 
• Walter Feilchenfeldt (Zurich) 
• Elizabeth Gorayeb (The Wildenstein Plattner Institute, New York) 
• Dr. Günter Herzog (ZADIK, Cologne) 
• Dr. Meike Hoffmann (Mosse Art Research Initiative, Freie Universität Berlin) 
• Prof. Dr. Ralf Krestel (Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam)
• Martin Lorenz (Wildenstein Plattner Institute, Berlin) 
• Prof. Dr. Christoph Meinel (Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam) 
• Dr. Victoria Noel-Johnson (Rome), France Nerlich (INHA, Paris) 
• Dr. Nadine Oberste-Hetbleck (University of Cologne) 
• Agnes Peresztegi (Looted Art Litigation, New York and Paris) 
• Prof. Dr. Chris Stolwijk (RKD, The Hague) 
• Dr. Ortrud Westheider (Museum Barberini, Potsdam)

8th Symposium, December 5, 2018 
 
Van Gogh repeatedly returned to still lifes, from his first painting to the brightly colored flower pictures of his late period. This symposium was held in preparation for the first exhibit dedicated to this subject, which featured over twenty paintings that traced the decisive steps in Van Gogh’s work and his development toward a freer and more intense use of paint. In this genre he experimented with painting techniques and possibilities—ranging from creating space with light and shadow to experimentation with color.  

Speakers at the symposium:  

• Sjraar van Heughten (Utrecht) 
• Stefan Koldehoff (Cologne) 
• Eliza Rathbone (Washington) 
• Marije Vellekoop (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam) 
• Dr. Michael Philipp (Museum Barberini, Potsdam) 
• Dr. Oliver Tostmann (Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford) 
• Prof. Dr. Michael F. Zimmermann (Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt) 

7th Symposium, October 17, 2018 
 
Seventeenth-century Rome was the cultural center of Europe in terms of architecture and visual arts. Pope Urban VIII, from the Barberini family, was a patron of painters and sculptors, and he commissioned paintings that are now considered masterpieces of Italian art history. During his papacy he transformed Rome into the capital of the Baroque, which had great influence on European architecture. Many buildings in Potsdam that were built under Frederick the Great of Prussia and his successor, Frederick William IV, were based on Italian models. 
 
The symposium was organized in cooperation with the Gallerie Nazionali Barberini Corsini in Rome in preparation for the exhibition Baroque Pathways: The National Galleries Barberini Corsini in Rome, which in the summer of 2019 presented masterpieces from the Gallerie Nazionali at the Museum Barberini. 

Speakers at the symposium:  

• Maurizia Cicconi (Gallerie Nazionali Barberini Corsini, Rome) 
• Michele Di Monte (Gallerie Nazionali Barberini Corsini, Rome) 
• Inés Richter-Musso, curator of the exhibition 
• Prof. Dr. Sebastian Schütze (University of Vienna) 
• Dr. Franziska Windt (Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg, Potsdam)

6th Symposium, March 5, 2018 
 
The exhibition Gerhard Richter: Abstraction in the summer of 2018 was inspired by a new acquisition. The show traced Richter’s development from the 1960s to the present and investigated the artist’s abstract strategies and approaches. Ranging from the black-and-white Photo paintings and Color Charts, the Gray paintings and the Inpaintings, to the Abstract pictures, as Richter often titled his works from the late 1970s onward, the works retain traces of the brushes, squeegees, and spatulas used to create them. 

Speakers at the symposium:  

• Hubertus Butin (art historian, Berlin) 
• Dr. Dietmar Elger (Gerhard Richter Archiv, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden) 
• Prof. Dr. Matthias Krüger (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich) 
• Dr. Ortrud Westheider (Museum Barberini, Potsdam) 
• Prof. Dr. Armin Zweite (formerly Sammlung Brandhorst, Munich) 

5th Symposium, December 13, 2017 
 
Pointillism, a style of painting in which short brushstrokes of brightly colored paint were juxtaposed, developed from Impressionism in the 1880s. Henri-Edmond Cross (1856–1910) is one of the leading exponents of this Neo-Impressionist movement. With his friend and fellow painter Paul Signac, he discovered the Côte d’Azur as a subject for his paintings. Situated between the Impressionists around Claude Monet and the forerunners of Expressionism around Henri Matisse, his oeuvre marks a crucial step along the path toward abstraction. He was celebrated early on as a pioneer of modernism in Germany. 
 
In collaboration with the Musée des impressionnismes in Giverny, the Museum Barberini presented the first retrospective ever devoted to Cross at a German museum in 2018. Speakers at the symposium: 

• Marina Ferretti (Musée des impressionnismes Giverny) 
• Annette Haudequet (Musée d’Art Moderne André Malraux, Le Havre) 
• Monique Nonne (formerly Musée d’Orsay, Paris) 
• Richard Thomson (The University of Edinburgh) 
• Dr. Daniel Zamani (Museum Barberini, Potsdam)  

4th Symposium, April 24, 2017 
 
In the German Democratic Republic, official state art was political, and ideological aspects have been explored in numerous exhibitions in recent years. But how did East German artists critically portray themselves in private, and how did they depict their relationship with the state-supporting function that was expected of them? The exhibition Behind the Mask: Artists in the GDR investigated various approaches to self-staging in the GDR, balanced between role-play and withdrawal, between prescribed collectivism and creative individuality. 

Speakers at the symposium: 

• Valerie Hortolani (Museum Barberini, Potsdam) 
• Hannah Klemm (St. Louis Art Museum) 
• Prof. Dr. Petra Lange-Berndt (University of Hamburg) 
• Dr. Michael Philipp (Museum Barberini, Potsdam) 
• Dr. Carolin Quermann (Städtische Galerie Dresden) 
• Prof. Dr. Martin Schieder (University of Leipzig) 

3rd Symposium, March 29, 2017 
 
Many works by Max Beckmann (1884–1950) depict the world of theater, circus, and vaudeville. The topic of putting on a show inspired him during his entire career. He viewed role-playing as a model of basic human experience and often assumed the position of the viewer. Faced with the trauma of World War I and the dramatic political developments during his years in exile after 1937, the world as a stage became a symbol for Beckmann of the catastrophic situation that prevailed. In his art, the metaphor is a strategy for confronting the present and its fundamental changes. The painter transformed his images into a stage for his art. Max Beckmann: The World as a Stage was the first exhibition to focus on this theme that was so fundamental for him, giving new insight into one the most exceptional artists of the twentieth century. The symposium at the Museum Barberini was organized in cooperation with the Kunsthalle Bremen. 

Speakers at the symposium: 

• Dr. Eva Fischer-Hausdorf (Kunsthalle Bremen) 
• Dr. Sebastian Karnatz (Bayerische Verwaltung der staatlichen Schlösser, Gärten und Seen, Munich) 
• Prof. Dr. Irene Pieper (University of Hildesheim) 
• Dr. Lynette Roth (Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge) 
• Dr. Ortrud Westheider (Museum Barberini, Postdam) 
• Dr. Christiane Zeiller (Max Beckmann Archiv, Munich)

2nd Symposium, November 21, 2016 
 
American art from the first half of the twentieth century is still little known in Europe. The exhibition From Hopper to Rothko at the Museum Barberini offered an overview of the subject matter and styles of North American art from Impressionism to Abstract Expressionism. It focused on works from the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, one of the most significant private collections in the United States, presented in Germany for the first time. 

Speakers at the symposium: 

• Susan Behrends Frank (The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC) 
• Alexia Pooth (Stiftung Bauhaus, Dessau) 
• Susanne Scharf (Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main) 
• Dr. Ortrud Westheider (Museum Barberini, Potsdam) 
• Sylvia Yount (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) 

1st Symposium, June 28, 2016 
 
Precise observations of nature gained importance in the natural sciences during the nineteenth century; the Impressionists also reacted to this trend by painting outdoors and capturing changing light effects and weather phenomena. Although the metropolis of Paris offered many motifs, landscapes provided the most important subject matter for Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro, and Gustave Caillebotte. The landscape motifs of these Impressionists were no longer charged with historical or symbolic significance; instead they focused on capturing the moment. The exhibition presented various aspects of landscape painting that the Impressionists transformed in the modern style. Through their depictions of forest paths, fields, and coasts, they emancipated themselves from earlier generations. The Impressionists found new ways of using color in their pictures of gardens. They experimented with the color white in winter landscapes. They surrendered to the shimmering visual effects of southern light, and they returned again and again to the reflections of the river Seine. The landscapes of the Impressionists captivate visitors to this day, appealing to all of the senses. 

Speakers at the symposium: 

• Prof. Stephen F. Eisenman (Northwestern University, Evanston) 
• Dr. Christoph Heinrich (Denver Art Museum) 
• Prof. Richard Schiff (The University of Texas, Austin) 
• Dr. Ortrud Westheider (Museum Barberini, Potsdam) 
• Nancy Ireson (Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia) 
• Stefan Koldehoff (art historian)