The Digital Horizon 01: „Eventful Years – A Web Journal for the Exploration of Art Nouveau“

In a series of guest contributions, we will present exciting topics and projects of data and cooperation partners of the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek (German Digital Library) in the future: be it a new way of approaching a specific stock or a historical epoch, be it a new virtual exhibition or a special digitalisation project. What is the idea behind this? We wish to provide a view beyond our digital horizon and gladly allow our readers to take part in it!

 

The Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (Museum of Art and Design Hamburg), which, with many great objects, is a data partner of the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, has approached the era of Art Nouveau in a very individual way: a web journal guides the visitor through the „Eventful Years. On the Tracks of the Visionaries“.

 

As the first persons in this series of contributions, Dr. Manuela von Rossem and Friederike Fankhänel from the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg report on the Art Nouveau period, their idea of the web journal and its implementation.



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Eventful Years. On the Tracks of the Visionaries

A guest post by Dr. Manuela van Rossem and Friederike Fankhänel from the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (Museum of Art and Design) Hamburg

Man is never so creative, so innovative and so productive at hardly any other time in history than from the middle of the 19th up to the beginning of the 20th century. The climate of these years seems favourable to groundbreaking discoveries and far-reaching inventions, to social developments and sustainable life reforms.

 

There is a spirit of optimism in the western hemisphere. From 1851 the World Exhibitions provide a showcase for the rapid technical progress. Man’s mobility takes a leap forward, steam engines allow ships to travel upstream, drive trains, and this mechanism is then replaced by the newly-invented electricity. Automobiles for individualists are first powered by steam, then with electricity and, at a later date, with a combustion engine. The world is connected by telegraphic and telephone services. Societal models come under scrutiny and are changed – with great resistance and just as much vehemence

Artists participate actively in this changing world. The Art Nouveau provides new means of expression in a transnational design vocabulary. Design excellence is presented to an international public at the World Exhibitions, in Paris (1900) and Turin (1902), for example.

 

In 1900 the founding director of the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Justus Brinckmann, also travels to Paris and lays the foundation for this institution with his far-sighted purchases. Intended to be an exemplary collection, this has inspired generations of creative people since then.

In 2015 the exhibits are re-arranged, the collection profile more clearly defined and – with loan items from other institutions in the special exhibition “Art Nouveau. The Great Utopia” - contextualised. The result is a comprehensive picture of the time around 1900. The objects show the place of the birth of women’s rights, the emergence of educational reforms, the development of healthcare systems and new lifestyles in the course of history. But not only this. The narrative enables you to establish a bridge up to today’s trends, places modern achievements in a broader context and changes the perspective.

To breathe life into this period of upheaval in a sustained manner, we have bundled together the insights of the special exhibition and the new presentation of the collection into a story which develops around an imaginary main character, yet is enacted in real places and with real protagonists. Through the web journal “Eventful Years. On the Tracks of the Visionaries” , conceived as the travel diary of a young, fictional reporter, users have the opportunity to travel through time, even far away from the museum

In eight chapters and over a period of almost two decades, the tour extends from the Hamburg working class neighbourhood to Freud’s couch in Vienna, via the Paris World Exhibition to a tea room in Glasgow and, after a holiday trip with light, air and raw food on a hill near Ascona, returns to Hamburg which shows itself to be greatly changed with a new university clinic and a newly-opened city park. Photographs, film material, music and texts of that period illustrate the events; the encounters with the personalities convey the revolutionary ideas of the years around 1900

Those of you who wish to immerse themselves in the one or other perspective can further follow the original sources via direct references and a thematic collection of links. Those who would like to deal creatively with the artistic works of those years may use free templates available via the MKG online collection.

 

We have also developed “Eventful Years. On the Tracks of the Visionaries” as an accessible website. It you do not wish to read, you can use our audio description; in addition, blind and partially-sighted persons may also discover the content via picture descriptions read out and keyboard-based navigation. The prologue in German sign language provides users who are deaf or hard of hearing with first access to the web journal.



Contact: Dr. Manuela van Rossem, Friederike Fankhänel, vermittlung [at] mkg-hamburg.de

Links

„Eventful Years. On the Tracks of the Visionaries“ – The web journal of the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg

 

Art Nouveau Objects of the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in the Deutschen Digitalen Bibliothek  

 

Art Nouveau - Virtual Exhibition by Europeana