24/25 April: International Symposium: Revisiting Islamicate Worlds. The Folkwang Concept in Context

Karl Ernst Osthaus had established practices of displaying European and non western art side by side since the museum’s opening in Hagen in 1902, thus staging an encounter between the arts of different cultures. This practice was continued by Ernst Gosebruch, director of the Museum Folkwang in Essen, from 1922 onwards. The current presentation of the collection  ›New Worlds‹ which has been in place since 2019 is based on this tradition of a ‘school of seeing’.

Against this background, the conference aims to continue an ongoing conversation about the museography and historiography of the Arts of Islam and its musealization, and to develop new insights and questions that are informative for the Essen collection and beyond. The results will be incorporated into the exhibition ‘Karl Ernst Osthaus and the Arts of Islam’ (working title), which will be on show at the Museum Folkwang in 2026.

INFORMATION and PROGRAMME

Registration by 20 April 2025 to: symposium@museum-folkwang.essen.de