Exhibitions 2012

25 March to 8 July 2012

14 July to 4 November 2012



25 March to 4 November 2012




Opening hours:
25 March to 4 November 2012
Open daily from 10.00 am to 5.00 pm
July and August 2011:
Extended opening to 8.00 pm every Friday



Service:
Special guided tour through the exhibitions daily at 2 pm (min 8 pers.), supplement: € 3,50



Your are more than welcome to ask here for further information about the exhibition!

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The Admont monastery presents the following exhibitions in 2012:


BEYOND SEEING
Art that brings together the blind and the sighted

Admont Abbey – Library & Museum
25 March to 8 July 2012
Curator: Michael Braunsteiner

The emphasis in our contemporary art exhibitions is increasingly focussing on the artistic production within our in-house series MADE FOR ADMONT. One unique feature of our growing collection in this area is the array of BEYOND SEEING works, created specifically for partially sighted and blind visitors that can also be enjoyed by the sighted on more than one sensory level. The first works for this series were commissioned in 2002. Now in 2012, for the first time, a retrospective exhibition of these remarkable BEYOND SEEING creations representing ten years of fruitful artistic endeavour will be on show in the museum of Admont Abbey.

One feature common to all the BEYOND SEEING artworks is that they have not been conceived to be principally appreciated visually. Every one of them can be deciphered in different ways by blind persons and sighted individuals wearing blindfolds. Of course, all have a particular form and have been designed using various inventive approaches to make them suitable for their intended purpose. Hence, these objects, pictures, installations and multimedia creations are also visible. Each has its own individual and sometimes surprising aesthetic intent.

Usually visitors to museums and art galleries are subject to certain restraints, one of which is that they are forbidden to touch the exhibits. In the case of our artworks, it is quite the opposite. One of the objectives of the exhibition is to encourage the – usually interactive – exploration of the works using more than just sight. The exhibits are there to be touched, listened to and even smelt – depending on their purpose. For the blind, they are immediately and directly accessible. The sighted will find that they are able to experience art through unexpected and unusual avenues – approaches that are new, different and not without humour.

Those who are willing to delve deeper into the meaning of these works may find themselves confronted with fundamental questions of existence. Sighted persons can gain an ‘impression’ of what the world of the blind ‘looks like’. By special request, certain pieces of the artworks have been designed so that blind persons are encouraged to convey what they perceive to sighted persons, as is the case with our ‘Invisible Garden’.
Sighted visitors who engage with these artworks will find that their eyes are opened to areas to which they are normally blind. It is to be hoped that the exhibition will spark an exciting process of art sharing between the blind and the sighted that will open up new perspectives for both sides.




BETWEEN REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING
Finiteness & Eternity

Admont Abbey – Library & Museum
14 July to 4 November 2012
Curator: Michael Braunsteiner

Birth, life and death, remembering, fading and forgetting: the boundaries and the spaces in between. That is the subject of this exhibition. Some areas of the museum display works from the Abbey’s own holdings, drawing on the wealth of objects available. Others reveal the subject naturally inherent in them in the manner of a zoom. Different genres begin to communicate with each other. Past, present and future interweave:

In the furnishings and books of the baroque library and in the museum of natural history, you can find all of the questions of “Remembering and Forgetting” that interest us – and quite probably several answers, too. In the museum of contemporary art, current art on the topic communicates with historical books. In P. Gabriel Strobl’s museum of natural history, stuffed animals, ethanol-preserved specimens, countless plants and insects appear to be alive – and yet they are all long dead.

Only human intervention has saved the specimens from decay and rot. The fight against the ravages of time is also evident in the museum of art history. We try to preserve the finest art works for as long as possible, in most cases for many years and even centuries. But not for ever. Against the backdrop of the philosophy of existentialism, the paintings and prints of Hannes Schwarz (b. 1926) explore the depths of this important topic.

The baroque columned hall presents the multimedia experience of the Dramatic Poem, generally believed to be unperformable, to the music of Robert Schumann’s “Manfred”. The poem is based on a text by Lord Byron, originally conceived as an Anti-Faust. This work, directed and visualised by media artist Johannes Deutsch in 2010, and only performed three times at the Düsseldorfer Tonhalle, is concerned with a man who believes his life to be at an end, begging to be able to forget and finally dying from grief. Original drafts and storyboards give an insight into the creation of this total work of art.

Everything has an expiry date. Without exception. And in the end? What then?! We human beings are all different. Some believe that it’s all over then. Others say they will be reborn into this transient world. Christians believe and hope – believe in God and hope for eternal life after death. And some believe quite different things. Everyone thinks that they know that they are right. What do you think?

Humankind has pondered these questions from the very beginning. They are focal topics above all in religion, philosophy, science and art. Admont Abbey with its richly varied museum and library is the ideal place to explore the most burning, timeless and topical questions of our human existence.




Download:
Museumsfalter 2012
353 KB

Objekttexte "Beyond Seeing"
203 KB



Thanks to our partner:

                 



The exhibition BEYOND SEEING is under the patronage of Gianfranco Kardinal Ravasi - the president of the pontifical council for culture!