Feminine Moments visited Schwules Museum Berlin

I was in Berlin and I made this portrait of myself in the street by the door of Schwules Museum. (Photography is not allowed inside the museum).

Schwules Museum*

In July I, Feminine Moments’ editor visited Schwules Museum*, the gay museum of Germany in its new rooms. In April 2013 the museum moved from a backyard in queer Kreuzberg into its new locations at 73 Lützowstrasse in the neighbouring Tiergarten district of Potsdam, Berlin. The move has been made possible by public funds totalling 644.00 Euros awarded by the European Regional Development Fund and the German Lottery Fund Berlin. The members of the staff with whom I spoke were all very happy about their new house and who wouldn’t be that! Congratulations (!!) to the museum, which has move into rented rooms of 1.620 m2 in a totally renovated former office building in a quiert Potsdam street with private hospitals, art galleries, physiotherapist clinics and residential backstreets. The museum has now an exhibition space of 722 m2, with four rooms.

Schwules Museum* is run by a staff of 10 people, who are working in a spacious administration above the exhibition space, and about 50 volunteers help in the museums’ exhibition and the research library.

The Museums press materials reads: ‘Since January 2010, the museum as an institution has been supported by the culture budget of the city of Berlin. This support in the amount of 250.00 euros annually considerarbly assists the operations of the museum and in addition provies the museum with exellent future development potential.’ – ‘Aside from a physical expansion, the move also means a thematic expansion for the house: the Schwules Museum* intensifies its function as a center for information on the diversity of sexual identities and concepts of gender. The previous permanent exhibition is being archived and a new interrim exhibition will be shown in its place: Transformations, until the opening of the new permanent exhibition which is planned for 2015.’

Transformation

The press release about Transformation reads: ‘Transformation means more than just the process of transforming: it also means renewal and the overstepping of limits. This chronological show is centered on the large social theme of gender classification and the struggles over its transformation since 1800. Focussing on Germany, the exhibition is an associative journey through the many transformations through which LGBTIQ communities (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Trans Intersex Queer) and their protagonists have passed over the course of their histories: It sketches ways of life and identities beyond the heteronormative classification of gender, highlighting victories and defeats, the creativity and determination of those involved, as well as the difficult and sometimes questionable compromises they made.
Transformation has been conceived as an interim exhibition and will be on view until the opening of the new permanent exhibition. Most of the objects on display are drawn from the collection of the Schwules Museum, supplemented by some items on loan.’

Exhibtion view by Tobias Wille. Courtesy of Schwules Museum*. The photo above right  is also by Tobias Wille.

I enjoyed the Transformation exhibition with its big collage of visual representations of LGBGTQ people through out the last 125+ years. It features a mix of old sketches, etchings, litographs, vintage photographs and paintings of LGBGT people. However, I couldn’t stop myself from wondering why the women artists and their works were less in number than their gay male collegues and their works? This exhibition reflects very much the museum collection and the fact that the curatorial focus of the museum was ‘gay male’ since the museum opened in 1987 and until now. – I am sure that a lot of contemporary German queer women artists and photographers would have been happy to loan the museum some of their works, if the museum had asked them. Looking at my notes from Berlin these are the queer women / lesbian visual artists, which I spotted at Transformations: Elise Benniecke (1855 – 1915) a painting, Jeanne Mammen (1890 – 1976) two litographs, Germaine Krull (1897 – 1985) photos of lesbian nudes, Leonor Fini (1908 – 1996) a litograph, Tabea Blumenschein (1952) two paintings, Petra Gall (1955) a series of documentary photographs, Katharina Mouratidi photo of a lesbian with children and Nan Goldin a photo.

A transformation process takes time and I hope hope that Schwules Museum* in the future will make the big lesbian / queer feminist art show, which should have been curated years ago in Germany. – It is such a shame that nobody has dared to present a big group exhibition with a contemporary visualisation of lesbian lifestyle, the queer female gaze and queer women’s sexuality yet in Germany and Berlin with one of the biggest urban LGBTQ communities in Europe and the world.

This summer the museum also presents the exhibtions: Between Tradition and Modern – Early Paintings of Jochen Hass 1950 to 1955 and the historical poster exhibition lesbian. jewish. gay. with portraits and biographs of important lesbian and gay German Jews.

The museum tells that 65 % of their visitors are international tourists. I am happy that I took my time to visit the museum and I hope that you’ll go to see the museum next time your are in Berlin.