Body and Soul. Images of Human Beings from Four Millennia

What is man? What distinguishes him? Questions which have moved human beings for millennia, constantly compelling them – us – to set out in search of new answers. To this day, the human body – the smallest social unit and a representative of ideas, desires, longings, individuals and cultures – is a favourite motif with which artists throughout the ages have inquired into the essence of man and the conditions of human existence. To celebrate the reconstruction of the main entrance hall and the new special exhibition space in the east wing, the show assembles selected masterpieces from the collection of the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe and directs the visitor’s attention to the exceptional wealth, diversity and quality of the museum’s holdings which – comprising over 500,000 objects – offer an incomparable reservoir for stories about humanity. For the duration of the show, more than 100 exhibits from the departments of Antiquity, China, Japan, Islam, European arts and crafts, graphic art, photography, fashion and furniture design will be leaving their places in the art-historical chronology of the permanent collection and uniting to create a thematic exploration of the human being – the creator and epicentre of “Kunst und Gewerbe” (“arts and crafts”) – in imagery. The objects mirror how mankind deals with such themes as birth, passion, beauty, play, conflict, individuality, veneration and death, and pave the way for the discovery of similarities and differences in various cultures’ conceptions of the body and the soul to the very present. “Body and Soul” offers an unusual perspective on the collection – playful, associative, an appeal to the beholder’s imagination.

Image: Fig.: Leonhard Kern, Adam and Eva after their Expulsion from Paradise, ca. 1645/50, MKG, photo: Hiltmann/Rowinski/Torneberg