Diözesanmuseum

11 artists will present their works in the Diocesan Museum. The focus will be on works from the current special exhibition as well as works that were shown in the tandem exhibition in Stuttgart (St. Maria). There will be room for questions, lively conversations and discussions.

The event is planned – with small breaks – to last until the early evening. The afternoon will be musically accompanied by Anna Ohlmann (saxophone) from Stuttgart.

Interested parties are cordially invited to attend the discussions.

We look forward to ending a successful and multi-faceted exhibition in Rottenburg together.

Please register – up to 4 days before the start of the event – at museum@bo.drs.de or by telephone on 07472-922-180.
Alternatively, you can register online via our event programme.

Information on the competition, (tandem) exhibition and prize winners can be found at:
https://dioezesanmuseum-rottenburg.de/vulnerable-preistraegerinnen/

Picture:
Moritz Urban, FORT COMFORT, Intervention, 2022. Photo: Kai Loges, die arge lola

The Stuttgart part of the exhibition “Vulnerable” will end on 24 July 2022 “danced, imprivatised”. The internationally renowned choreographer, dancer and dance educator Yahi Nestor Gahe will interpret the Vulnerable in a dance improvisation. He will be accompanied by the Rottenburg Cathedral organist Ruben J. Sturm with improvisations on the organ. This will be a dignified and artistically demanding end to the extraordinary exhibition in St. Maria.

Music: Prof. Ruben J. Sturm (Cathedral organist / Professor for organ literature playing and organ improvisation; Rottenburg).

Dance: Yahi Nestor Gahe (choreographer / dancer / dance teacher; Stuttgart)

Admission for young people aged 12 and over is €5, adults pay €10.

The team of the Diocesan Museum looks back on an eventful, interesting and colourful Katholikentag. The museum was able to organise a total of two exhibitions and eight cultural events, and was also represented with its own stand in the Stadtgarten. The response was positive throughout! The vernissage in St. Mary’s, where the winners of the art competition “Vulnerable” were honoured by Bishop Fürst, the photo exhibition “Next door” in St. Agnes as well as the diverse artistic and musical offerings in the city met with great interest. The events stimulated exchange and reflection, but also invited people to celebrate and marvel. We would like to thank all the cooperation partners and the numerous artists for their commitment and good cooperation, which also made the Katholikentag a success for art and culture!

The competition had met with a great response: Around 600 artists applied, 25 young creatives were selected. They dealt with the vulnerability of human life in a variety of ways.

“The pandemic and most recently the war in Ukraine have brutally torn us out of what we take for granted in life,” says Auxiliary Bishop Dr Gerhard Schneider, who is also responsible for art in the Diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart. “It is difficult to put this much-cited ‘turn of time’ into words. For us as a church, it is important to make art strong, especially in times of crisis like these. Art offers ways to express, find and orient oneself in the unknown and always incomprehensible events of our time – especially where words are no longer able to do so.”

Achieving two kilometres of distance with one step

The works are correspondingly diverse in their form of presentation. For example, Simon Pfeffel’s video performance “Mit einem Schritt” (With one step), which won him one of the first prizes, shows how he covered the approximately two-kilometre distance from Stuttgart’s main railway station to St. Mary’s with just one step. “To do this, the artist tied one of his legs up and then hopped and limped his way through Königsstraße,” reports Sebastian Schmid, theologian and curator of St. Maria’s, who was part of the interdisciplinary competition jury along with nine other people.

Schmid: “Simon Pfeffel was clear that he would not make it without the help of strangers. Nevertheless, he didn’t ask anyone for help. Only when passers-by in Stuttgart offered to support him did he let themselves be carried or propped up. The exhibition shows video recordings of this impressive action, in which he put himself at the mercy of strangers.”

The motto of the Katholikentag also stands for being vulnerable together

The director of the Diocesan Museum in Rottenburg, Dr Melanie Prange, who was responsible for the competition and also a member of the jury, is pleased that the exhibition will now be opened during the Katholikentag. “Our works of art fit particularly well with the motto ‘sharing life’ of the Katholikentag, because all people are vulnerable, because vulnerability is precisely the essential moment of human existence and God has exposed himself to this vulnerability. Together we are vulnerable and it is especially in togetherness that paths to healing are paved. The motto of the Katholikentag brings essential thoughts of our competition and exhibition theme once again to the point.”

Kriz Olbricht wants to show with his artwork that the church itself is also vulnerable. To do this, he has hammered five dividing wedges into the wall of St. Maria. These are a kind of nails that normally create cracks in stones.

“It took a lot of convincing before the artist was allowed to hammer these dividing wedges into the wall of the church,” Schmid reports. “Just the idea that there could be a crack in the church wall almost caused panic in some people. The congregation itself was the least afraid.” The parish council immediately understood what Olbricht was about, he says. “After all, the five nails in the chancel stand for questions like: How seriously does the church take the cross? Does it dare to make itself vulnerable? Does it risk its own structure to take the side of the wounded?”, the theologian explains further.

Exhibition on view in Stuttgart from 27 May to 24 July

Visitors to the exhibition can look forward to nine more works of art, which will be on display in St. Mary’s from 27 May to 24 July. Dr. Prange is pleased that the exhibited works inspire new perspectives: “”The diocese has consciously decided to formulate a question and to let itself be challenged by the answers of young creative people – in other words, to make itself vulnerable and open. Especially against the background that the church itself is responsible for the worst psychological and physical wounds. Taking creatives seriously and not giving them guidelines enables a serious engagement with religious content, biblical texts and existential questions. The artistic results are surprising, inspiring, open to interpretation and testify to the depth of the engagement. A result to be emphasised for the cooperation and interaction of church and art.”

Award ceremony at the vernissage on 27 May.

The award ceremony of the Vulnerable competition will take place at the vernissage of the exhibition on Friday, 27 May, at 7.30 pm with Bishop Dr Gebhard Fürst and the members of the jury in St Mary’s. Some of the artworks will also be exhibited there until Sunday, 24 July.

In addition, there will be a tandem exhibition at the Diözesanmuseum Rottenburg between 19 June and 28 August with the other part of the award-winning works. The vernissage of this exhibition with Auxiliary Bishop Dr Gerhard Schneider will begin on Sunday, 19 June, at 3 pm.

You can find further information online: https://dioezesanmuseum-rottenburg.de/vulnerable-preistraegerinnen/

Clothes make the man – and sometimes also tell us something about people’s faith. This is the subject of a large fashion exhibition in the Diocesan Museum in Rottenburg am Neckar – and in the next issue of “Alpha & Omega – Church in conversation”.

Magnificent vestments of saints can be admired in many pictures. Museum director Melanie Prange reports on how theological content is conveyed through these fabrics and how textiles make the sacred tangible, so to speak.

In cooperation with the Pforzheim University of Applied Sciences, fashion students also designed their own collections and liturgical vestments of the future for the exhibition. It becomes clear that religion and fashion have a lot in common, as Pforzheim professor Sybille Klose explains in the programme.

Watch the programme

The programme “Shaping Faith – Fashioning Splendour” produced by KiP-TV was first broadcast on 30 April 2022. You can find this and other episodes of “Alpha and Omega” on the YouTube Diocesan Museum Channel.

Das Diözesanmuseum gestaltet mehrere Kulturveranstaltungen auf dem Katholikentag mit. Es lohnt sich also um so mehr, Ende Mai nach Stuttgart zu kommen. Der Eintritt zu den Veranstaltungen ist über die Tickets zum Katholikentag möglich.