NEW IN THE COLLECTION

The museum is always striving to expand its collection of contemporary art. We can expand, complete and further develop the inventory of the house through targeted purchases and donations. Particular emphasis is placed on significant individual works that have the power to convey an idea of the entirety of a direction, an outlook, an intention.

Here you will find a selection of our new acquisitions:

Sven Johne, Das sowjetische Hauptquartier, 2023, Videostill, © Sven Johne / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024

Sven Johne
Das sowjetische Hauptquartier
2023, 4K video, 32:57 min

Das sowjetische Hauptquartier (The Soviet Headquarters), 2023, takes place on the now vacant site of the former officers' house in Wünsdorf, Brandenburg. The palatial estate, build in the early twentieth century in a neo-baroque style, served as the cultural headquarters of the Soviet troops stationed in East Germany until 1994.

This headquarters is the scene of a conversation between the doomed real estate agent Becker and the supposed interested buyer Katharina Baronn.
As the film progresses, the film’s focus shifts and Baronn's inner monologue comes to the fore: As an 8-year-old child, she experienced the withdrawal of Soviet troops. Since then, a sentimental Soviet Union has haunted their memories as a supposed alternative to real capitalism. In

In Das sowjetische Hauptquartier, childish, idealized memories of the East collide with the horrors of real-world capitalism.

The art museum has acquired Das sowjetische Hauptquartier in 2024. The film is on display from 8 March until 26 May.

Susan Meiselas, Nicaragua 1978-79, Youths practice throwing contact bombs in forest surrounding Monimbo, 1978

Susan Meiselas
Nicaragua, 1978-79
Nicaragua: 10 Years Later Pictures From a Revolution, 1991

The photographs taken by Susan Meiselas in Nicaragua are still considered by some to be Meiselas' signature work. Meiselas' work in Nicaragua is a milestone in war photography due to its groundbreaking and controversial use of colour and remains a model of committed, subjective documentary reporting. Without an assignment of any sort, Meiselas went to Nicaragua in 1978 to cover the popular insurrection following the assassination of the editor of the opposition newspaper La Prensa. “I am not a war photographer in the sense that I didn’t go there for that purpose,” explained Meiselas. “I’m really interested in how things come about and not just in the surface of what it is.” Over three decades, in times of war and peace, Meiselas returned to the sites where she took the original photographs, using her book Nicaragua: June 1978–July 1979 (first edition, 1981) to find the people she had photographed and record their testimonies, resulting in her third film on Nicaragua, Pictures from a Revolution (1991).

The art museum has acquired five C-prints from the series Nicaragua, 1978-79, including Youths practice throwing contact bombs in forest surrounding Monimbo, 1978, as well as five accompanying videos from Pictures From a Revolution, 1991.

Bjørn Melhus, LOLTROLL, 2023

Bjørn Melhus
LOLTROLL

From the fountain on the forecourt of the art museum Kloster Unser Lieben Frauen he babbles, quacks and scolds - the LOLTROLL by Bjørn Melhus. Like a hologram, a head hovers in the depths, constantly changing its appearance and emitting snippets of speech: sounds of enthusiasm, but also snippets of speech from social media and absurd terms from insults. LOL (Laughing Out Loud) meets the internet troll, a person whose comments are emotionally provocative in order to deliberately disrupt discussions on the internet.

LOLTROLL is located in the sculpture park in the well at the entrance to the museum and can be heard from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m.