Joseph Beuys The Space Curator

Joseph Beuys was a charismatic artist with a creative will that could not be fazed by the restraints of institutions and museums. In the year marking his one-hundredth birthday, the Staatsgalerie will pay tribute to him with an exhibition exploring his work presentation methods. The Beuys Room in the Stuttgart museum, set up by the artist himself in 1984 and unchanged to this day, will serve as the point of departure. 

For the opening of the Neue Staatsgalerie, Beuys not only installed his own room ensemble, but also intervened spectacularly in the presentation of the museum's collection by placing the world-famous figurines of Oskar Schlemmer's Triadic Ballet on high bases. It was a deliberate – and deliberately provocative – act on the part of the artist-curator Beuys, now to be reconstructed for the show. 

On the basis of photographs, film recordings, and objects, the exhibition will retrace how the artist integrated his sensitivity to the art, the viewer, and the museum space in his working process.