The exhibition
WORLD CONCEPTS
The Darmstadt Artists’ Colony 1899 – 1914
Permanent exhibition featuring fine and applied art from Art Nouveau to Modernism: The museum’s numerous artworks, scale models, and multimedia presentations shed light on the outstanding significance of the Darmstadt Artists’ Colony for the development of modern architecture, art and design since 1900.
“World Concepts” chronologically illuminates important events and exhibitions between 1898 and 1914 that illustrate the wide array of artistic work in multiple mediums that defines the Darmstadt Artists’ Colony.
The main focus of the exhibition is placed on four major exhibitions that took place on the Mathildenhöhe in the years 1901, 1904, 1908, and 1914, in which fully furnished houses as aesthetic works of art presented a new concept of modern architecture and design. These exhibitions also presented fully functioning restaurants, concerts, theatre productions, and light shows. All aspects of life were represented in modern world concepts.
The permanent exhibition is on display in both wings of the Artists’ Colony Museum and presents more than 300 works.
All 23 members of the Darmstadt Artists’ Colony are featured in the exhibition, among them the influential architects and designers Peter Behrens, who built his first house in Darmstadt, Joseph Maria Olbrich, as well as the decorative artist Hans Christiansen. Several works of the Darmstadt Municipal Art Collection will be on view for the very first time; for example a pump organ from 1908 designed especially for Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig and recently gifted to the museum.
As part of a new web-app for smart phones, an audio guide in German has been launched to explore the permanent exhibition and the outdoor site of the Mathildenhöhe.