Press kit: The Life of Things. Looted – Displaced – Salvaged
20.4. to 1.9.2024
Location: Lauffen/​Bad Ischl

Showcasing contemporary works of art, the exhibition Das Leben der Dinge focuses on the fate of works of art and artefacts between looting, displacement, restitution, and reconstruction. Approaches informing the show range from the discussion of colonial looting and questionable collecting activities to state sanctioned theft and expropriation and cultural genocide through looting and the destruction of cultural objects. The exhibition’s focus is deliberately directed at the objects’ immaterial value and the memories and (hi)stories that have inscribed themselves upon them. As the creators of objects, artists are essentially linked to these objects and their networks of meaning and are uniquely sensitized to their (mis)representation. This is why art institutions are indebted to artists for imparting impulses to new strategies that enable them to deal responsibly with issues of restitution and the preservation of humanity’s cultural heritage. With Said Baalbaki, Hera Büyüktaşçıyan, CATPC / Renzo Martens, Ines Doujak, Assaf Hinden, Moussa Kone, Oliver Laric, Markus Proschek, Anja Ronacher, Dierk Schmidt, Philip Topolovac, and others.

Curators: Hemma Schmutz (Director Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz), Markus Proschek (Guest curator)

Lentos and the European Capital of Culture Bad Ischl Salzkammergut 2024 – Linz, Lauffen, Bad Aussee

Within the overall framework of the programme line “Power and Tradition", the Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz contributed three exhibitions in a project entitled “The Journey of the Paintings" to the European Capital of Culture Bad Ischl Salzkammergut 2024.The Journey of the Paintings. Hitler’s cultural policies, art trade and storage during the NS era in the Salzkammergut at Lentos in Linz was the flagship event in the capital of Upper Austria and invited visitors to stop over on their way to or from the Capital of Culture.
Furthermore, the Lentos was present in the Salzkammergut in a collaborative venture with the Kammerhofmuseum in Bad Aussee with the exhibition Wolfgang Gurlitt. Art dealer and profiteer in Bad Aussee, and at the revitalised former Marktrichterhaus [Market Reeve’s House] in Lauffen, in the exhibition entitled The Life of Things. Looted – Displaced – Salvaged.