Henry van de Velde Museum
Architecture and art from early European modernism to the present day
Current exhibition
GETANZTER RAUM two- and three-dimensional objects by Jean Kirsten, Dresden 01 February 2025 to 30 June 2025
More than 110 years ago, the architect and designer Henry van den Velde renewed the applied arts and the dancer and choreographer Rudolf von Laban the performing arts through their own actions, but also through their teaching. It is not entirely clear whether van de Velde and von Laban met in person, for example at the founding of the Deutscher Werkbund in 1907 or at the artists’ colony on Monte Veritá near Ascona/Switzerland. There was at least indirect contact via the sculptor and Art Nouveau artist Herman Obrist. In any case, there are analogies between their intellectual and artistic attitudes.
Rudolf von Laban laid the foundations for the development of modern dance with his fundamental research into human movement. Among other things, he created the theory of spatial harmony and the Laban notation, a dance script. Both use the “platonic bodies” in relation to the human body. Among Laban’s many famous students are Mary Wigman, Sophie Taeuber-Arp and Kurt Jooss.
Since 2009, Dresden artist Jean Kirsten has been working with Rudolf Laban’s theory of spatial harmony and kinetography. His aim is to design spaces in the sense of an installation with his own two- or three-dimensional objects. In doing so, each sculptural object claims its own independence within a staging. The empty space that arises between the objects and is thus defined by them is also important to him.
The exhibition was opened on Saturday, 1 February 2025 at 15:00 in Haus Schulenburg.
The laudatory speech was held by Dr Teresa Ende – Dresden.
As a duo, the musician Wieland Möller and the dancer/choreographer Ingo Reulecke – Berlin have reacted to the works of Jean Kirsten with an improvised performance.
World cultural heritage “Manual glass production – Art Nouveau to Art Deco”
15 January 2025 to 20 December 2025
Following its great success in 2024, the Henry van de Velde Museum is once again showing elaborately designed coloured glass from Art Nouveau (Art Nouveau 1890 – 1920) to Art Deco (1920 – approx. 1940). Pieces that are otherwise on display at the Grassi Museum Leipzig, the Bröhan Museum and Köpenicker Schloss Berlin, the Glas Museum Weißwasser and the Driehaus Museum Chicago.
The exhibition focuses on valuable historicist, Art Nouveau and Art Deco glassware, which takes visitors on a colorful journey from 1850 to 1940. The glass works of art come from large private collections.
Traditional glass production is part of the cultural heritage of mankind
The occasion for this remarkable exhibition is the inclusion of traditional manual glass production in Finland, France, Spain, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Germany on the UNESCO World Heritage List on December 6, 2023. The Lamberts glassworks in Waldsassen is one of the initiators of this recognition; Lamberts is one of only two companies in the world that still produce mouth-blown flat glass. This glass adorns the illuminated clock faces of Big Ben in London, the glass art of the Rockefeller Center in New York, the windows of the Frauenkirche in Dresden and the opalescent skylight of the Schulenburg House.
Protagonists of glass design
Glass art after 1900 received enormous impetus from technical innovations in glass production.
The Parisian dealer in Japanese art and founder of “Maison d’Art Nouveau” Siegfried Bing brought Louis Comfort Tiffany glasses from New York and had the exclusive distribution rights for Tiffany in Europe. In Nancy, Emile Galle, who had studied zoology and botany, among other things, produced his splendid, variously colored, etched and cut glasses, often with botanically accurate plant decorations. In 1901, he founded the famous Ecole de Nancy with the glassmakers Auguste and Antonin Daum, René Lalique and Gabriel Argy Rousseau.
Other famous companies in the glass trade included: Delatte – Nancy (France), the Poschingers (Bavaria), the Lausitzer Glaswerke – Weißwasser (Saxony), Loetz’ Witwe – Klostermühle (Bohemia), the Fritz Heckert glass factory – Petersdorf (Silesia), WMF – Geislingen (Württemberg).
Permanent exhibition
“A walk-in total work of art by Henry van de Velde”
Haus Schulenburg” is unique in its unity of building complex, originally reconstructed interiors and the outdoor facilities also designed by van de Velde.
Many building details also bear the artist’s signature: designed stucco moldings and walls, wood paneling, parquet and tiled floors, ironwork on windows, doors, gates and staircases, lamps and decorative fabrics.
In addition: 32 pieces of furniture designed by van de Velde from the House of Schulenburg, which were recovered after worldwide research.
In recent years, furniture by the “Bauhaus carpenters” Erich Dieckmann and Marcel Breuer, the Werkbund architect Albinmüller and French Art Deco display cabinets have been added.
With around 100 pieces, Haus Schulenburg houses one of the most extensive collections of Henry van de Velde’s book designs outside the Royal Library in Brussels.
The permanent exhibition includes works of art, publications and documents from van de Velde’s European and Weimar surroundings from the period 1895 – 1940, paintings by Curt Herrmann, Georg Muche, the Weimar artist couple Hilde Linzen-Gebhard and Heinrich Linzen, Albinmüller, Otto Herbig and others.
Virtual tour of Haus Schulenburg
Discover Haus Schulenburg virtually by clicking on the photo.
Collections
In addition to Henry van de Velde’s important collection of book designs, the museum’s collection also includes Lithographs by Honoré Daumier, a representative number of originally designed children’s and art books by the English Arts and Crafts artist Walter Crane (1845 – 1915), Art Nouveau graphics, a collection on the art publisher “Der Sturm”, graphics by German artists from the war years 1914 – 1918, the tempera sketches for the painting of the Gera Ratskeller by Heinrich Linzen (1942), graphics of the “GDR Modernism”, sculptures by Guillaume Charlier, Constantin Meunier, Auguste Rodin, Jan Stursa, Georg Kolbe, Richard Engelmann, Volkmar Kühn, Heidrun Feistner and others.
