A lecture-discussion will take place at the Kunstverein on Sunday, June 7, 2026, at 4 pm. Artist Maximiliane Baumgartner, students from Baumgartner’s former class at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, and art historian Wolfgang Brauneis will discuss their joint class project Memory Acts for a Learning Space (2025), which is based on field and archival research.

The starting point for Memory Acts for a Learning Space was a joint walking tour and field research conducted with art historian Wolfgang Brauneis, curator of the exhibition “Die Liste der ‚Gottbegnadeten‘. Künstler des Nationalsozialismus in der Bundesrepublik“ at the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin. Based on the question of how Nazi-era artists received major public commissions after 1945, using Düsseldorf as an example, an artistic visualization of the tour and the subsequent archival research was created in the form of a mapping and critical commentary on individual stops. This aims to highlight the reciprocal relationship between remembering and understanding. The works of artists on the “Gottbegnadeten-Liste”—compiled in 1944 on behalf of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels—continue to shape the face of many city centers to this day; this includes, as in Düsseldorf, works from the Nazi era and the Federal Republic. Bolstered by public approval and networks that continued to function, they won competitions even after 1945 and received commissions for art in architecture, the design of lobbies and squares, museums, and memorials.

The tour includes works by Arno Breker, Hans Breker, Georg Kolbe, and Willy Meller, as well as buildings constructed after 1945 by architects on the former “Gottbegnadeten-Liste,” such as Helmut Hentrich and Julius Schulte-Frohlinde. In Düsseldorf in particular, the continuities of collaboration between visual artists and architects during the Nazi era and the postwar period can be impressively demonstrated. As part of the artistic research, artists such as Julo Levin and Franz Monjau—here exemplified in the context of the art academy—who were ostracized, persecuted, and murdered during the Nazi era were also taken into account. In contrast to the artists on the so-called “Gottbegnadeten-Liste” these artists received unequal attention after 1945: their works—and thus their conception of the image—are today largely invisible in public spaces. In this context, the question arises regarding critical image knowledge and critical image production, as well as an artistic practice capable of contributing to art-historical discourses.

The lecture-discussion will take place as part of Baumgartner’s solo exhibition at the Kunstverein Düsseldorf. It is a collaboration with the class of Lena Newton at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in conjunction with the exhibition 100 Jahre Klasse Bühnenbild an der Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, which will be on view at the Akademie-Galerie from April 17 to June 14, 2026.

The students participating in the event are: Max Graf, Katharina Janz, Aylin Ismihan Kabakcı, Lucien Liebecke, Vitus Lux, Lily Mertens, Anja Panzer, Ziran Pei, Antonia Gretchen Prinz, Paula Slomke, Lea Weeber and Lea-Sue Zorlu. In Memory Acts for a Learning Space were involved also: Jan Gottwald, David Hartig, Filiz Huz, Marie Koch, Liam Lutz, Juliana Paek, Tanja Pohl, Flora Seidl, Gabriela Tudor, Amelie Uliczka, VIN and Marcus Wagner.

The lecture-discussion will be held in German.