Exhibitions 2012

25 March to 8 July 2012

14 July 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 connects blind people and sighted people
Admont Abbey – Library & Museum
25 March to 8 July 2012
Curator: Michael Braunsteiner

The curatorial emphasis on contemporary art is increasingly focusing on the artistic production of the Abbey’s own MADE FOR ADMONT series. The BEYOND SEEING art works specifically designed for visually impaired and blind people, and that sighted people can experience with multiple senses, are a special feature of this ongoing collection programme. The first of this kind were commissioned in 2002. Admont Abbey Museum is presenting a retrospective show of ten years of production of the works from this unique collection of art works BEYOND SEEING for the first time in 2012.

A common feature of all of these BEYOND SEEING art works is that the focus in not on perceiving them with the eyes. They can all be experienced in different ways by blind people and blindfolded sighted people. Of course, they always have a form – they are more or less artistically shaped, designed according to their particular purpose. Hence, these objects, installations or multimedia works are equally visible. They have a very special, often astonishing aesthetic.

While galleries and museums traditionally say “Do not touch!”, it’s very different with these art works. Visitors to this exhibition can experience art differently – usually by means of interaction. Depending on the particular exhibits, they can be touched, heard, smelt, and possibly even tasted. They are accessible without barriers for blind people. Sighted people, in turn, can access art in unexpected, playful, very different, and completely new ways.

Looking beneath the surface reveals the fundamental questions of life. Sighted people can get a “picture” of what the world of blind people “looks” like. On special request, some of these art works even offer the opportunity for blind people to convey their modes of perception to sighted people, for example in the “Invisible Garden”.

The show also gives people the opportunity to overcome inhibitions and prejudices and access contemporary art without any barriers. Art is not only there to be seen, it can also be “grasped” with the hands and experienced with all one’s senses, which also makes it easier to “grasp” it with the mind. By engaging with this art, the blindfolded eyes of the sighted visitor will begin to see areas to which many of us are usually blind. An exciting process of ART SHARING unfolds between blind people and sighted people that widens the horizons of both.



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
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