Bruno Souza

That crazy little thing called love is now in the spotlight at Berlin’s Bode Museum – and not just in the galleries! For museums.love, of course, the choice of love for an exhibition already gets five stars. But more than that, it’s wonderful to see how the theme of the show extends beyond the museum walls to embrace the community. Under the title “The Second Glance: All Forms of Love”, the exhibition aims to expand the view of love to include forms that have been marginalized in traditional Western art history. Smart to organize this show together with the Schwules Museum, Berlin’s LBGTQ* museum! With five paths through the permanent collection, the visitor can choose which theme to explore:

1. In Love and War (masculinity and bisexuality among soldiers)

2. Male Artists and Homosexuality (artists active in homosexual circles)

3. Art of Antiquity and Enlightened Collecting (homosexual collectors)

4. Heroines of Virtue (female intimacy and erotic love)

5. Crossing Borders (gender fluidity)

Not only is the museum seizing the chance to tell important, diverse new stories with its objects, but it is enriching the offerings with a lecture series (the next talk is next week!). I imagine that other types of events too could have appealed to the newer, more diverse audiences being addressed – like performing art shows and new kinds of participatory tours! But of course there is only so much one can do, and the show is already an enormous step into the 21st-century idea that museums exist for their communities. A free object catalog online increases access to the project, as well as a glossary and bibliography for the eager beavers among us. Hosting the lab.bode visitor engagement workshops as well, the Bode Museum is truly the community champion of Museum Island!

Armchair travelers rejoice! More and more museums are putting not only their collections online, but even actual exhibitions. Online collections and online exhibitions have some points in common, but also some crucial differences. Both can allow the visitor to zoom in on a high-resolution photo of an object for a closer look. And both resources offer at least some information about the objects. But an online exhibition does more. It highlights a few objects in the context of a certain theme, and thus offers a more cohesive look into a moment in history through the objects. Placing the objects into a frame like this – associating them with other objects and describing them in focused texts – is a great way to tell a compelling story. What is more, online exhibitions can allow the visitor to move through a virtual space in line with their own interests. And sometimes they connect with exhibitions in the physical world – a chance to see some of the objects in person.

Here are some fabulous online exhibitions – just a click away!

Bauhaus: Building the New Artist – The Getty Research Institute https://www.getty.edu/research/exhibitions_events/exhibitions/bauhaus/new_artist/

Rembrandt in Southern California – Hammer Museum, The J. Paul Getty Museum, LACMA, Norton Simon Museum, Timken Museum of Art https://rembrandtinsocal.org/virtual-exhibition/

Vermeer, Kawakubo, Coco Chanel and 24 more exhibitions by The Met Museum and Google Arts & Culture https://artsandculture.google.com/partner/the-metropolitan-museum-of-art

Virtual tour of the permanent collection – Bode-Museum http://bode360.smb.museum

O Sentimental Machine – Liebighaus Skulpturensammlung https://kentridge.liebieghaus.de/en/william-kentridge-o-sentimental-machine