The exhibition developed by the Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning to mark the anniversary "70 Years of Art in Buildings in Germany" in 2020 offers for the first time a synopsis of building-related art from both German states that was commissioned by the federal government between 1950 and 1990 and since reunification. In eleven chapters, around 65 works of art for federal institutions in Germany and abroad are presented and appreciated in their historical, political and architectural context.

Wuppertal will be one of the last stops of this exhibition. In a small supplement, outstanding examples in this city are also included and explained in their respective context. In addition, the exhibition offers, en passant, a small outlook on the history of the Faculty of Architecture and Civil Engineering, as some of the protagonists taught here or are even present in their works to this day.

03.05.2023 until 09.06.2023
Mon-Fri 09.00 - 20.00 (not on public holidays)
Bergische Universität Wuppertal
Foyer of the Faculty of Architecture and Civil Engineering
Pauluskirchstrasse 7, Building HC, Haspel Campus

Opening
03.05.2023, 18.00 Uhr

Two events will take place as part of the exhibition.

Heroic, Resting, Struggling? On images of the human body in two sculptures in Wuppertal

16. 05 2023, 18.00, Faculty of Architecture and Civil Engineering

Pauluskirchstrasse 7, Building HC, Haspel Campus

With Bettina Milz (Pina Bausch Centre Wuppertal), Hans Günter Golinski (Director Kunstmuseum Bochum until 2021), Maya Alam and Christoph Grafe (both Bergische Universität Wuppertal).

In the 1950s, two monumental sculptures were erected in Wuppertal in which the contradictions of the cultural mixtures of the Federal Republic were expressed in a special way: Draped Seated Woman by Henry Moore and Pallas Athene by Arno Breker, the most prominent artist of the Nazi era. Both works of art were acquired and installed as part of the Kunst am Bau programme. They show human - female - figures, once standing upright and self-confidently warlike, then again resting in themselves. How can we understand these images of the body and what do they say about their time of origin or the artists' conception? Do they still have something to say to us today, and if so, what?

Sacred Mountains - Schools - Memory. On the Cultural Landscape of the Bonn Republic

25.05.2023, 18.00, Faculty of Architecture and Civil Engineering

Pauluskirchstrasse 7, Building HC, Haspel Campus

With Getrude Cepl-Kaufmann and Jasmin Grande (both from the Working Group Modernism in the Rhineland/Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf) and Brigitte Alexander (Wuppertal Historical Parks Association).

After the break with civilisation of the Third Reich, educational institutions had the central task of contributing to the reconstruction of civil society in the newly founded Federal Republic. The new foundations of teacher training colleges sought to promote the new beginning, but also to embody it. This idea was expressed in a special way in the buildings for the teacher training colleges in the newly founded state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Both in Bonn and in Wuppertal, renowned artists came into play, contributing works in the context of art on buildings in which the socio-political aspirations and artistic tendencies in the young Bonn Republic met.