"Experiment Künstlerehe" - the first museum for an artist couple

The first four years of the marriage of Clara and Robert Schumann, probably the most famous couple of the 19th century, are the theme of the new permanent exhibition at the Schumann House in Leipzig, which opened on 13 September. The newlyweds moved into their flat at Inselstraße 18 on Clara's birthday: 13 September 1849. In the new museum, the "experiment of artistic marriage" is illuminated on the basis of powerful quotations from both partners and staged with technical sophistication. The first museum for an artist couple is intended to inspire visitors to find their own personal perspective on the musician couple and to build a bridge from history to the present day. The focus is on the two works created in the Schumann House, "Die Ehetagebücher" (The Marriage Diaries) and the song cycle "Liebesfrühling" (Love Spring), which they composed together. The basic idea for the curator Prof. Dr. Beatrix Borchard and the museum director and managing director of the Schumann Society Gregor Nowak is to look at Clara and Robert Schumann at eye level, according to the concept: "My work is also your work". Karsten Blum from Homann Güner Blum Atelier für visuelle Kommunikation is responsible for the exhibition design.

The innovative highlights of the new exhibition include "Clara's Hand", on which visitors can make sounds and entire works by the pianist through an installation by Erwin Stache. In the Marriage Experiment Room, six beamers transform one room into three thematic worlds. Feature writer Magdalene Melchers developed "Visualised Features" for this. Inspired by words of the Schumann couple, the tensions between love and art, joy and burden with the children, wealth of gifts and struggle for money become visible and audible. Surrounded by associative imagery, lines appear in a new light and allow the visitor to immerse himself impressively in the respective themes. In the Schumann Hall, where the couple once received friends and famous personalities, portraits of, among others, Clara's mother Mariane Bargiel, the singer Wilhelmine Schroeder-Devrient and fellow composer and friend Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy can be heard on selected seats via infrared loudspeakers.

Read more