12 March 2011

The Deutsche Guggenheim: Agathe Snow


Agathe Snow
Walls, 2010
© Agathe Snow

We visited the Deutsche Guggenheim again for a Kinderwerkstatt. The theme was the latest exhibition, Agathe Snow: All Access World. This was again, a type of performance Modern Art. Here is a portion of the description from the exhibition:
Agathe Snow: All Access World takes as its subject the world's monuments, landmarks, and historical sites, focusing on the ways they shape collective memory and serve as potent touchstones of national identity. Snow sets out to explore how these iconic structures could jettison their didactic aspects in favor of a new flexibility that would increase their relevance to contemporary life and make them vessels of cultural exchange. This utopian ambition is articulated through her establishment of All Access World, a fictional corporation with the stated aim of promoting "a more democratic approach to monument ownership and distribution." Within this conceptual realm, monuments are subjected to an irreverent process of reinvention whereby they are transformed into consumer products that have the potential to reflect individual tastes, interests, and experiences.
It was indeed interesting, with the artworks ranging from a tactile fur Stonehenge to large papier-mache monuments, and it was fun to move the artworks around, to climb into the Hollywood piece and look out and to see the video installations. But I think that my next museum visit will be a bit more old-fashioned. I need a bit more serenity to recover.

The children had fun at the werkstatt, which had the concept that one should "make a bag" to take with one on one's journey. That was a bit above the girls' understanding, I think, but T1 drew an interesting picture of a destination and T2 made an object of various items and I think that was enough fun to go on.

2 comments:

Milly said...

That does look like a lot of fun. I was sorely disappointed in the Guggenheim when I visited, but it must've just been an off exhibit.

G in Berlin said...

The exhibits here are very monocultural- this one was in fact commisioned for the space. The actual Deutsche Guggenheim is not a real Guggenheim, but a collaboration of Deutsche Bank with the Foundation and the Bank actually has a much wider assortment of its own art in the building: viewable the 1st Monday of the month at 17:30 by appointment, and free. But for the actual exhibits, for kids, you really need to have a Kinder-Werkstatt, where special docents (there are two) work with the children to discuss the art and to involve them in understanding and appreciating it. The Colorfields workshop was more fun for T1, because it was more painting focused and she is a budding artist. But in a city like Berlin, the choice of museums is nearly overwhelming and if you look to do things with kids, the state museums have a great search function for kids' activities.