22 March to 26 August 2018

The Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung presented a very special guest: William Kentridge (b. 1955) brought his works into dialogue with the collection of the Frankfurt museum, which spans five thousand years. Conceived as a comprehensive exhibition showing over eighty works and installations, “William Kentridge. O Sentimental Machine” exemplified the whole range of the South African artist’s oeuvre. Kentridge has made an international name for himself with his drawings, films, and theatre and opera productions. Already featured in solo exhibitions in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Albertina in Vienna, and the Louvre in Paris, as well as in opera productions at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Scala in Milano, the Salzburg Festival, or Documenta, his production as an artist is fundamentally interdisciplinary and combines different media and genres. Staged by Sabine Theunissen and curated by Vinzenz Brinkmann and Kristin Schrader, the show extended across nearly all departments and rooms of the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung: from its antiquities collection and medieval rooms to the studioli of the historicist Villa Liebieg. Visitors were invited to engage in a dialogue of art encompassing the entire museum, in which Kentridge’s conceptual, narrative, and aesthetic intentions closely interlinked with the museum presentation of the Liebieghaus collection.

Curators Prof. Dr. Vinzenz Brinkmann (head of the Antiquities and Asia departments of the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung), Kristin Schrader (Assistant Curator)
Sponsored by Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain, Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne
Media partner Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, SLEEK, Verkehrsgesellschaft Frankfurt am Main
Culture partner hr2-kultur

The video below is a recording of the lecture by William Kentridge on his presently developed performance “The Head & the Load” in the Städel Museum on 22 March 2018.