Tom Holert: How anachronistic is that? Klaus Scherübel and the history of the "period rooms"

To translate a work of art (or an art exhibition) into an exhibition-as-a work-of-art is not a self-evident act. It raises questions, among which those that concern the concept of history and the experience of temporality. The talk will make the claim that Klaus Scherübel’s Cranach intervention touches on the problem of anachronism. Although every research-based and/or artistic activation of art-historical materials has to deal with the problem of anachronism, it seems particularly acute when viewers are invited, if feintedly, to immerse into the reconstructed. With his quasi-immersive stage design in the Paintings Gallery, extrapolated from the Cranach’s The Holy Kinship, Scherübel ties in with earlier projects of a conservational-artistic reconstruction of historical exhibitions. In order to clarify the unavoidability of  anachronism, the talk will focus on a central point of reference of Scherübel’s approach: the suggestive historiography of the “period rooms”.

Lecture in German

Tom Holert works as a writer, researcher and curator in Berlin where he is also a member of the Harun Farocki Institut. From 2006 to 2011 he has taught at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and implemented (together with Johanna Schaffer and others) the PhD in Practice program. Recent publications include ca. 1972. Gewalt – Umwelt – Identität – Methode (Spector Books, 2024) and Pierre Bourdieu, Fragen zur Kunst / Questions on Art (as editor) (Materialverlag HFBK, 2024).