“Extreme Tension” TALKS: A Special Event Series on the Collection Presentation at the Neue Nationalgalerie Starting 13 November 2024

04.11.2024
Neue Nationalgalerie

Accompanying the current presentation of the collection ‒ “Extreme Tension. Art between Politics and Society: Nationalgalerie Collection, 1945 – 2000” ‒ the Neue Nationalgalerie invites artists and specialists to participate in discussions from November 2024 to July 2025 on Extreme Tension, both past and present.

Across ten evenings, artists and specialists will talk about the role art played between politics and society, between the everyday and Pop Art, nature and ecology, and about feminism and fleeting identities. Under the title “Handlung als Skulptur” (Action as Sculpture), the series’ launch features an evening discussion with artist Franz Erhard Walther and art historian Gregor Quack on 13 November and the activation of selected works by Franz Erhard Walther (attended by the artist) on 14 November 2024.

The Extreme Tension TALKS take place on Wednesdays at 6 pm in the Neue Nationalgalerie lobby. Events are held in German unless noted otherwise.

Free admission; no registration required.

• Special Event Series Programme

The Collection Presentation ‒ Extreme Tension. Art between Politics and Society: Nationalgalerie Collection, 1945 – 2000

An enormous diversity of materials, mediums, and methods marked the art of the second half of the 20th century. At the same time, hardly any other era was so characterised by division, rupture, and transformation as the period following the Second World War. Holocaust and war, upheaval and emancipation, the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall all led not only to tensions within society but also to a fundamental realignment in visual art.