Girls/Museum - next gen artists & audiences

The collection of the MdbK comprises 3500 paintings, 1000 sculptures and over 60,000 works on paper, only a fraction of which is on display at any given time. The work spans the late Middle Ages through the Nazi and GDR times up to the contemporary, with strong holdings by Cranach the Elder and Younger (trailer), Max Beckmann, the Leipzig School, and contemporary painters such as Neo Rauch and Daniel Richter. A curator at the museum estimated that, of painting and sculpture, 19th century to the present, the work of male artists made up 95% of the collection, if not more.

We are born into an already-constructed world. We each enter with new eyes into a culture that has already been shaped and structured based on the desires and power of others. Historical art museums are charged with preserving and interpreting the tangible evidence of a civilization’s cultural trajectory and artistic achievement. On the walls of their hushed galleries, there is no lack of depictions of women on display – mothers, wives, prostitutes, artist’s models and muses, all seen through the eyes of male artists.

Girls/Museum engages three types of protagonists in its exploration of history, art, and institutions. The first is the museum building, with its austere architecture, soaring atriums and terraces.

The second protagonists are the objects that make up the collection (trailer). Paintings, sculpture, drawings and photographs – fragile objects that have been deemed precious representatives of their time. Though inanimate, these artworks are not inert – they dry, crack, yellow and fade, the aging process starting as soon as they are completed.

The third group of protagonists are girls who circulate within the museum space. They are the film’s guides and experts, speaking to each art object with gravity, respect, derisiveness and humour. They reference personal feelings and histories, expand out from the art works, to power, history, identity, the questioning or repeating of accepted values, and the need for change. The film is held in the tension between looking back and building forward.

The seventeen girls taking part in the film come from Leipzig, Halle and Berlin. Most were born in Germany, but some girls originally came from Afghanistan, Syria and Eastern Europe. Some speak to their relatively sheltered lives, while others allude to the more difficult trajectory of refugees and foreigners. The girls arrived to the interviews with no preparation or advance knowledge of what would be asked. They weren’t selected because they were classically knowledgeable or passionate about art. The only requirements were curiosity and an interest in taking part in the film, and especially a desire to openly speak about the objects they saw. The typical interview lasted several hours. The girls and the director both had a hand in selecting which artworks were spoken about. Once an artwork was chosen by multiple girls, other girls were encouraged to speak about it.

Director Shelly Silver comments on why and how she approached the subject: “Museums, even the most comprehensive ones, only show us a narrowed view of the world, even as they imply that they show a comprehensive history of cultures and civilizations. Through what lens should these institutions and these works be viewed? What exactly are they showing and teaching us, and why? I decided to start by asking the next generations of artists and audience. I wanted to know what they saw, how they were moved or influenced by a work, and if and how they integrated each work into their personal and world view.

I finally asked them if they were instantly made collector, curator and director of the museum, how would they change this museum? The girls stand squarely in front of each artwork speaking directly and movingly. These artworks provide an illusionistic window into another time and space, while still being an amalgam of inanimate stuff –– paint, varnish, wood, plaster, bronze. With the help of the camera’s lens we can see far closer than the human eye the thick cracked brushstrokes of clashing colours, tentative pencil lines under the more expert washes of colour or a spider’s web of cracks, fracturing the eye, hand and mouth. And then there’s the container, the physical museum, which holds and offers up these works, the proximity of the walls allowing for a ricochet of different looks across different centuries and social milieus, the rooms, with tastefully coloured walls and blonde flooring allowing for the longing gazes and angry glares, while the halls echo with hushed footsteps and then a child’s frustrated cry.”

Shelly Silver is a New York based filmmaker and artist working with the still and moving image. Silver’s work explores storytelling as a process of collective fantasizing. Her work traverses contested territories between public and private, narrative and documentary and the watcher and the watched. She has exhibited worldwide, including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate Modern, Centre Georges Pompidou, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Yokohama Museum, the London ICA, and the London, the Singapore, New York, Moscow, and Berlin Film Festivals. She is a professor in the Visual Arts, School of the Arts, Columbia University.

Girls/Museum, a film by Shelly Silver

with Giulia, Rosalba, Carla, Mila, Paula, Pauline, Charly, Ella, Selma, Mira, Farahnaz, Helena, Susanna, Hamse, and Luise.

The film has screened at international festivals from CPH:DOX to Melbourne International Film Festival, Duisburger Filmwoche, the National Gallery Washington, and The Future is Feminist at BAMPFA, Berkeley.