Representations of the Annunciation in Contemporary Art

Academy Franz Hitze House

November 13, 2007
until January 6, 2008

Prof. Dr. Dr. Thomas Sternberg, Academy Director

Cardinal-von-Galen-Ring 50
48149 Münster
www.franz-hitze-haus.de

Current exhibition:

Altötting City Gallery
The building used to house exhibits from the Capuchin mission in Chile. The rooms were renovated by the city of Altötting for changing exhibitions of fine art.

30.03. – 25.05. “Ave Maria – Annunciation” Munich Secession
More information:
Pilgrimage and Tourist Office Altötting
Chapel square 2 a
84503 Altötting
Tel. 08671/506238 – 19
Fax 08671/85858

Text for the work “the english greeting” by Nele Ströbel

“Hail Mary, virgin adornment, you are full of grace, the Lord is with you”.

with this “English greeting” begins a Bavarian folk song that for me very strongly transports the aspect of popular piety.

In the 7-part tableau (each 27.5 x 27.5 cm = 82.5² cm) I set the atmosphere with image sequences from a contemporary Hortus Conclusus.

Mixed Media. 2007

Press release:

On the occasion of the exhibition opening of the AVE MARIA project by Dr. Sabine Hannesen, Berlin:

In it, 39 artists devote themselves to one of the central subjects of Christian iconography with the help of a wide variety of techniques: “The Annunciation”.

Her figurative and abstract paintings, photographic works, and installations invite discussion, outlining the tension between art’s claim to autonomy in modernism on the one hand and its rootedness in Western Christian cultural history on the other.

Above all, the exhibition wants to bring the theme of God’s incarnation out of its current niche existence, to explore new, unconventional and cross-denominational spiritual ways of accessing it, but also to give space to provocation, doubt and critical inquiry.

After the AVE MARIA project was shown for the first time at the Ecumenical Church Congress in Berlin in 2003, new works are now on display in Münster. The opening of the exhibition will begin at 18.00h with a lecture on Mary and her importance for ecumenism by the Münster Professor of Catholic Dogmatics, Dorothea Sattler. Afterwards, the initiator and curator of the AVE MARIA project, Dr. Sabine M. Hannesen, will introduce the content of the exhibition.