Frauenau Glass Museum

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The Frauenau Glass Museum in Frauenau in the Lower Bavarian district of Regen , formerly a municipal institution, has been a state museum for the history of glass culture under the sponsorship of the Free State of Bavaria since the beginning of 2014 . The director of the museum is the art historian Karin Rühl.

The Frauenau Glass Museum (2009)

history

The museum was founded in 1975 by former mayor Alfons Hannes (1931-2010), by the Frauenau artist Erwin Eisch , from whom the suggestion came, Gretel Eisch and the then smelter Helmut Schneck as a municipal special museum. The museum provides information about the regional and international glassmaking tradition and, with special exhibitions and symposia, has developed into an international meeting place for glass artists and art audiences. The background of the glass museum is the 500 year old glassworking tradition of the community of Frauenau, but above all it is a child of the international studio glass movement , which is a European center through the close connection between the American glass pioneer Harvey K. Littleton (1922-2013) and Erwin Eisch in Frauenau Has. It was opened on May 6, 1975 in the presence of international glass artists with the special exhibition Venini-Murano, which for the first time in Germany provided a comprehensive overview of the development of the Italian manufacture with the exhibits from the private collection of the Stuttgart art historian Wolfgang Kermer .

The old Frauenau Glass Museum already linked the art, social and technological history of glass; in terms of presentation and collection activities, it spanned the gap between regional and international, historical and contemporary glass design. In collaboration with Erwin Eisch, Alfons Hannes pursued a correspondingly consistent build-up of the collection, from local holdings as well as from purchases, permanent loans and donations. The most important donation is the Wolfgang Kermer Collection, which comprehensively documents the beginnings of the international studio glass movement in the USA and Europe. The development of a unique collection of contemporary glass in art and craft is also of particular importance in the course of the lively activities with which Alfons Hannes made the Glass Museum and Frauenau a lively focus and meeting place for the glass world. Mention should be made here of the Bayerwald Glass Prize (1984, 1988 and 1993) and, above all, the organization of the legendary Frauenau International Glass Symposia (1985, 1988, 1991, 1995, 2000). The last International Glass Symposium Glass in Context: Art - Image - Industry took place in 2006 in the new Frauenau Glass Museum under the auspices of the International Bild-Werk Frauenau Academy (founded in 1987 by Erwin and Gretel Eisch, among others). In exhibitions, discussions and international master classes, artists, glass manufacturers and training institutions exchanged ideas about synergies and future potential in glass.

As part of the expansion of the Bavarian Forest National Park and the distribution of privatization proceeds by the Free State of Bavaria, Frauenau was awarded the contract to expand the existing museum. As part of a cross-border cooperation project with Czech glass museums, additional funds from the EU, the state and other donors could be obtained. This gave the opportunity to replace the previous building between 1999 and 2005 with a new building with roughly doubled exhibition space. In addition, the municipality's tourist information center and an exhibition of forest pastures in the Bavarian Forest National Park could be integrated.

It reopened on June 10, 2005. With a newly designed, ethnographic-artistic permanent exhibition, the collections, a large temporary exhibition area, glass historical archives, an internationally oriented glass library and conference rooms, the Frauenau Glass Museum sees itself as a documentation, research and meeting center for all those interested in glass and art. With its multimedia and perspective-rich presentation, the permanent exhibition expresses the mission of the Frauenau Glass Museum: In the light of the glass crisis and the decline of glassmaking, the aim is by no means to make historical glass culture a museum in the storeroom of history. Instead, the diversity and innovative strength with which glass has always represented new faces of society through the ages is brought together with the experience and knowledge of glassmakers and glass designers and consistently related to the question of the present and the future.

concept

The permanent exhibition is located on 1300 m² of exhibition space in a rotunda. The overall concept was developed by the cultural scientists and European ethnologists Katharina Eisch-Angus and Jörg Haller and implemented in collaboration with the Architekturschmiede from Kirchdorf i. Wald , interior designer Stefan Haslbeck, museum director Karin Rühl and implemented with 21 regional and international artists and local glass companies and glass experts. Due to the holistic integration of the permanent exhibition, glass artistic fixtures and museum architecture, the Frauenau Glass Museum is considered exemplary: the building and exhibition revolve around the center of a harbor glass furnace, which is partly made of glass. In eye contact, the visitors first go through a cultural-historical journey with the glass as a multimedia staged tour from the beginnings in Mesopotamia through all (stylistic) epochs to the present day, with a focus on the metropolises of the European, and especially the Bavarian-Bohemian civilization and Glass history. Inside the circular exhibition building, the second section, Living and Working with Glass, is a collage of the collective memory of the glassworks people. With eyewitness texts, photos and original parts from various glassworks, the production process and the working and living methods of a Mundglashütte can be understood from the perspective of its stakeholders. Problem areas such as globalization, automation or unemployment are discussed and related to the past and questions about the future of glass. The last section, Modern Glass, shows artistic glass from the 20th and 21st centuries, including the important donation from the Wolfgang Kermer Collection and the installation Narziss. An interior and other major works by the Frauenau glass artist Erwin Eisch.

The new permanent exhibition derives its relevance from the comprehensive historical contextualization of the glass exhibits in the context of European civilization history, but also from the change of perspective towards the experiences and perspectives of the glass producers, which are reproduced in interviews, pictures, films and contemporary exhibits. The dialogue between past and present is taken up by the artistic fixtures in glass and other materials and visualized in a scenic way. Among the numerous works of art that the new State Museum is taking over from this collaboration with artists are architectural competition works by internationally renowned artists such as Ursula Huth, Gerhard Ribka, Amber Hiscott, Bernhard Schagemann, Mark Angus and Ronald Fischer.

Wolfgang Kermer Collection

In 1982 the private studio glass collection of the art historian Wolfgang Kermer, which has often been created in personal contact with the artists since the 1950s and which had been shown in special exhibitions in 1975 and 1976/77, was due to friendly connections with Erwin Eisch and Alfons Hannes together with large ones Parts of his special library as a donation to the Frauenau Glass Museum. As the Bayerische Staatszeitung noted in 2009, it is "a cornerstone of the museum's permanent exhibition". The unity of the presentation, as agreed under the mayor and museum director Alfons Hannes, was, however, not preserved in parts in the course of the new conception of the museum.

After various donations - most recently in 2017 - have been added since then, the collection comprises around 350 objects from almost 200 glass artists and manufacturers. In their temporal orientation - the focus is on the 1950s and 1970s - and with the involvement of the leading for the contemporary state and the developing countries, it reflects the transitions and the transition from designed not personally performed by the designer glass design through to freelance creations created directly by the artists on the stove. Since new creative impulses and solutions for the collector were in the foreground right from the start, the donation contains a whole series of incunabula of the studio glass movement that began in the early 1960s, which at the time hardly attracted any interest from museums and collectors.

Among others, the following artists are represented, broken down by country:

  • Belgium: Georges Collignon, Louis Leloup
  • Denmark: Per Lütken
  • Germany: Erwin Eisch , Aloys Ferdinand Gangkofner , Max Gangkofner, Konrad Habermeier , Hans Klein, Kristian Klepsch, Rosemarie Lierke, Hanns Model , Klaus Moje and Isgard Moje-Wohlgemuth, Helmut Rotter, Albin Schaedel , Bernhard Schagemann, Gerhard Schechinger, Horst Stauber, Wilhelm Wagenfeld , Karl Wiedmann, Aloys Wudy, Jörg F. Zimmermann
  • Finland: Kaj Franck , Kerttu Nurminen, Heikki Orvola, Timo Sarpaneva , Nanny Still-McKinney , Oiva Toikka , Helena Tynell, Tapio Wirkkala
  • France: Michel Bouchard, Jean-Paul van Lith, Claude Monod, Isabelle Monod, Claude Morin, Jean-Claude Novaro
  • Great Britain: Samuel J. Herman, Karlin Rushbrooke, Pauline Solven, Fleur Tookey
  • Italy: Sergio Asti, Angelo Barovier, Ercole Barovier, Enrico Capuzzo, Mirko Casaril, Gino Cenedese, Giorgio Ferro, Luciano Gaspari, Peter Pelzel, Alessandro Pianon, Carlo Scarpa , Tobia Scarpa , Archimede Seguso, Ermanno, called Nino Toso, Paolo Venini , Gino Vistosi, Vittorio Zecchin
  • Japan: Kyohei Fujita
  • Netherlands: Andries Dirk Copier , Willem Heesen, Theo Yje Jansen, Floris Meydam, Sybren Valkema
  • Norway: Hanna Hellum, Benny Motzfeldt
  • Poland: Halina Jastrzebowska-Sigmund, Tasios Kiriazopoulos, Henryk Albin Tomaszewski, Henryk Wilkowski, Alina Wołowska
  • Sweden: Olle Alberius, Gunnar Cyrén, Edward Hald , Erik Höglund, Ulrica Hydman-Vallien , Jan Johansson, Paul Kedelv , John-Orwar Lake, Nils Landberg, Ingeborg Lundin, Edvin Öhrström , Bengt Orup, Sven Palmquist, John Selbing, Gerda Strömberg , Bertil Vallien , Göran Wärff, Ann Wolff
  • Czech Republic: Jindra Beranék, Josef Flek sen., Petr Foltýn, Vladimir Jelínek, Ladislav Oliva, Ladislav Paleček, René Roubiček, Ludovica Smrčková, František Špinar, Jaroslav Svoboda jun., Dana Vachtová, Karel Vaňura, František Vizner
  • USA: Robert Coleman, Claire Falkenstein, Jack Ink, Marvin Lipofsky, Harvey K. Littleton, Charles Lotton, Joel Philipp Myers

Since the 1990s, Wolfgang Kermer, as a collector, has mainly focused on the production of Eastern French glassworks (in today's Grand Est and Bourgogne-Franche-Comté regions ). In 2017, the couple France and Wolfgang Kermer donated well over a hundred hand-blown glass for everyday use to the museum under the title “Hommage au verrier anonyme”, with examples typical of the many long-lost forest glassworks in the Vosges. The remnants of what was once mass production today are often unique in character.

development

The municipality of Frauenau was responsible for the museum until the end of 2013. Since the total costs for the new building had risen from the originally planned 6.9 million to 8.3 million euros, this was criticized by the Bavarian Supreme Court of Auditors . The non-governmental museum has therefore so far been dependent on the support of friends, patrons and sponsors. At the beginning of 2014, the Free State of Bavaria officially took over the sponsorship of the museum as a state museum, which is associated with a significant improvement in the financial situation as well as the scope for action of the glass museum.

In order to honor the importance of the museum for the entire Glasstrasse , the Glasmuseum Frauenau was awarded the Glasstrasse Prize 2008. In March 2009, Erwin Eisch felt compelled to return his honorary citizen's letter due to ongoing criticism from the community of its own museum and the blame for the cost overruns on the scientific conception team.

literature

  • Alfons Hannes (with contributions by Wolfgang Kermer and Erwin Eisch): The Wolfgang Kermer Collection, Frauenau Glass Museum: Glass of the 20th Century; 50s to 70s . (= Bavarian Museums , Volume 9). Schnell & Steiner, Munich, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-7954-0753-2
  • Roman Eder, Alfons Hannes: Frauenau, chronicle of a Bavarian forest village . 2 volumes. Morsak 1999.
  • Katharina Eisch-Angus: Glass in Context. Conception and realization of the new Frauenau Glass Museum . In: Museum design. Quality as the key to visitor orientation . Report volume of the Upper Austria. Museum days 2008 in Wels. Edited by the Association of Austrian Museums. Leonding / Austria 2009, pp. 14–25, uni-graz.at (PDF; 1.2 MB)
  • Katharina Eisch-Angus: Culture dies with the glass. European transformation processes in the mirror of glassmaking up to the present day. In: Heidrun Alzheimer (Ed.): In Europe - cultural networks local, regional, global (= publications for folklore and cultural history , volume 104). Würzburg 2012, pp. 37–57, glashaus-magazin.de (PDF; 651 kB)
  • Michael Schmidt: A lot was possible! Alfons Hannes (1931-2010) . Riedlhütte 2011.
  • Sven Bauer: Glass Museum Frauenau - State Museum for the History of Glass Culture . Kunstverlag Josef Fink, Lindenberg im Allgäu 2017.

Web links

Commons : Glasmuseum Frauenau  - collection of pictures

Individual evidence

  1. Alfons Hannes, Wolfgang Kermer: Venini-Murano: 65 glasses from the Kermer collection , catalog brochure special exhibition Glasmuseum Frauenau, 6 May to 28 September 1975, ed. from the community of Frauenau in 1975.
  2. Frauenau-glasmuseum.de
  3. ^ Glass art from the 60s and 70s - 65 objects by 65 artists: Wolfgang Kermer Collection , exhibition catalog Glasmuseum Frauenau, December 1976 to November 1977, ed. from the Frauenau community in 1976 (text by Alfons Hannes); Modern ceramics from France - Kermer Collection , June 28, 2008 to March 8, 2009, Glasmuseum Frauenau 2008 (introduction and artist directory with biographical data: France Kermer ), private print; Ceramic Worlds in French: Exhibition opening Modern Ceramics from France - Kermer Collection in the Glass Museum . In: Der Bayerwald-Bote (Neue Passauer Presse), July 2, 2008, p. 29; Ines Kohl: Ceramics from France: The Kermer Collection in the Frauenau Glass Museum , in: Landshuter Zeitung, July 26, 2008; France Kermer: Modern Ceramics from France - Kermer Collection , in: Modern Ceramics, Issue 5, September / October 2008, p. 48; S [ylvie] G [irard]: Les Collections Kermer au Musée de Frauenau . In: La Revue de la Céramique et du Verre , No. 162, September / October 2008; Ines Kohl: Outstanding lonerism: The Kermer Collection in the Frauenau Glass Museum . In: KeramikMagazin Europa / CeramicsMagazine Europe , No. 6/2008, December / January, pp. 40–42.
  4. a b Katharina Eisch-Angus: Glass in context. Conception and realization of the new Frauenau Glass Museum . In: Museum design. Quality as the key to visitor orientation . Leonding / Austria 2009, pp. 14-25.
  5. Frauenau-glasmuseum.de
  6. Antique and modern glasses from all over the world: third season in the Glass Museum: special exhibition "Glass Art of the 60s and 70s" . In: Der Bayerwald-Bote, No. 298, December 28, 1977.
  7. ^ Alfons Hannes (with contributions by Wolfgang Kermer and Erwin Eisch): The Wolfgang Kermer Collection, Glasmuseum Frauenau: Glass of the 20th century; 50s to 70s (= Bavarian Museums . Volume 9). Schnell & Steiner, Munich, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-7954-0753-2 .
  8. Ines Kohl: Ceramics as liberated fire art . In: Bayerische Staatszeitung, No. 2, January 9, 2009, p. 20.
  9. Katharina Eisch-Angus, Jörg Haller u. a .: The journey with the glass: a handout for the Frauenau Glass Museum . Series of publications by the Frauenau Glass Museum, Vol. 10, Frauenau, undated [2009] ISBN 978-3-00-029645-1 (without bibliography).
  10. Christina Hackl: Wolfgang Kermer: A great friend of the Glass Museum: his donation of over 350 glass objects forms the basis of the modern collection - new exhibits presented. In: Der Bayerwald-Bote , No. 144, June 25, 2005, p. 36.
  11. Christina Hackl: The happy end of an odyssey. Glass Museum is the first state museum in Lower Bavaria. - Ceremony for the handover to the Free State of Bavaria. In: The Bavarian Forest Messenger . 4th January 2014.
  12. Edith Rabenstein: Honorary Citizen's Letter returned. Erwin Eisch: Don't let my name be misused. In: Passauer Neue Presse . March 14, 2009.

Coordinates: 48 ° 59 ′ 17.2 ″  N , 13 ° 17 ′ 54.2 ″  E