Dominique Hurth‘s artistic work focuses on the dynamics and hierarchies of archiving and on lacunae in the archives. Reveal or conceal?

This question is also the focus of the installation „Ohne Datum: Vermutlich 1938 - Doppelbelichtung (Undated. Presumably 1938 - Double Exposure)“, which is based on various exhibition views from the Prussian Academy of Arts from 1936 to 1943.

One of the focal points is the presentation that took place in the Kronprinzenpalais under the aegis of Hermann Göring to mark the 175th anniversary of the KPM (Royal Porcelain Manufactory Berlin). The photographs, dated „presumably November 1938“, show display cases of various kinds containing porcelain objects. The delicacy of the objects contrasts with the history of violence that was part and parcel of the exhibition. In the 1920s, the Kronprinzenpalais had been a locus of radical modernity. The Galerie der Lebenden (Gallery of Living Artists) had opened there in 1919 under the directorship of Ludwig Justi as a new section of the Berlin Nationalgalerie. The Nazi era brought the exhibition programme to a halt, and various works were seized. In 1937, the Prussian Academy of Arts moved into its spaces. The catalogue accompanying the first exhibition that the Akademie organised there begins with a sculpture of Hitler by Arno Breker.

Hurth has replicated one of the display cases shown in the catalogue as part of her installation. It is turned into a display object of its own, thereby inverting the normal scheme of things in the exhibition context and drawing attention to the disruptions and lacunae in the system.

(Text: Clara Herrmann)

„Ohne Datum: Vermutlich 1938 - Doppelbelichtung (Undated. Presumably 1938 - Double Exposure)“

Digital Print on Fabric (400 x 600cm)
Vitrine: MDF (180 x 130 x 62cm)
Prints, dimension variable

Installation views:
Out of the Box – 75 Years of the Archives of the Akademie der Künste.
Pariser Platz, Berlin (DE), 08.10.2025 - 18.01.2026