Press release
The Garden Enters the Museum
Gardens of the World – a major special exhibition at Museum Rietberg
13 May – 9 October 2016
Gardens of the World is the first attempt ever to present a comprehensive survey of the gardens of the Orient and the Occident in a single exhibition. Museum Rietberg in Zurich invites visitors to take a stroll through gardens from Japan to England and from Ancient Egypt right up to the present day. Works of art, photos and videos show how people in different cultures and epochs longed for gardens and how they created them.
Is it actually possible to stage an exhibition on the subject of gardens? Albert Lutz, director of Museum Rietberg, was convinced that it was, even before he came up with the concept for Gardens of the World. Yet simply to show the historical development of the garden under a number of headings would surely have fallen short of the mark. Gardens need to be experienced; after all, they are the only art form that appeals to all the senses. “Museum Rietberg is the ideal place for a garden exhibition because it is located in the middle of the magnificent Rieterpark”, says Lutz.
The thirty stories of gardens told in the museum’s exhibition rooms begin with paradise worlds. This opening section shows how, both in Europe and in Asia, paradise was usually depicted as an enchanted garden. It includes an installation by the German artist Wolfgang Laib, who has strewn pine pollen to create a radiant field of microscopic yellow dust. It symbolises the quintessence of the garden as the beginning of plant life.
This section is followed by a more or less chronological tour: from the gardens of Ancient Egypt to those of Islam, from Japanese and Chinese gardens to European horticulture. Among the more special exhibits is an entire room devoted to the famous insect book by the eighteenth-century Japanese master of woodcuts Kitagawa Utamaro. For Gardens of the World, the two pieces of an Egyptian limestone relief – showing tree goddesses – that are normally housed in two different museums have been reassembled for the first time. The highlight of the Oriental gardens section is a painting on loan from the Louvre that is probably the world’s most beautiful garden painting in Islamic art.
The exhibition also features some of the big names of art, such as Claude Monet, Carl Spitzweg, and Max Liebermann. There are garden paintings from Switzerland, too. Works by Paul Klee show how radically his work and his preoccupation with the garden motif changed over the course of his life. Paintings by the Thurgau artist Adolf Dietrich illustrate how one and the same subject – in this case his neighbour’s garden – can repeatedly inspire new works.
Contemporary works of art that reference historical gardens are a further focal point of the exhibition. They include copies made by Ai Weiwei of the fountain figures from the garden of Beijing’s summer palace, which no longer exists. Photocollages by David Hockney present some unusual views of what is probably Japan’s most famous garden, the Ryoan-ji stone garden in Kyoto. Roman Signer is also represented, with a video from the garden at Wörlitz, Germany’s oldest landscape garden.
Numerous other multimedia installations convey some of the more unusual aspects of gardens. Excerpts from fifteen feature films from the years 1940 to 2011 have been edited together to show a series of garden scenes – of persecution and murder but also of seduction and love. An app created especially for the exhibition turns one of the world’s oldest garden plans, from Ancient Egypt, into a 3D experience.
The show continues outside the exhibition rooms. The so-called changing garden right by the entrance – an urban, vertically structured garden – provides a link to the twenty-first century. There is a connection to the exhibition too, as many of the climbing and flowering plants growing on the frames are also depicted in the artworks on display.
The Rieterpark, the museum’s villa garden, forms the magnificent backdrop to the exhibition. It is one of Switzerland’s most beautiful landscape gardens and has been planted specially for the exhibition with the kind of flowerbeds that would have been fashionable in the nineteenth century. To allow visitors to admire the garden from an unusual perspective, the loggia of the Villa Wesendonck will be open to the public for the first time ever.
The extensive programme of events planned under the auspices of Gardens of the World is also designed to allow visitors to experience gardens in a number of different ways: there will be a market devoted to herbs, a garden festival celebrating life in the great green outdoors and a English-style afternoon tea, bringing a piece of English gardening culture to Zurich. Concerts, talks, garden tours and film evenings will complete the programme.
Why did the museum take the bold step of mounting an exhibition on a subject that is so inherently complex and vibrant? “Because it is a great subject”, says Director Albert Lutz, “one that not only appeals to all the senses but touches everybody in some way.”
For further information please visit: www.rietberg.ch, www.gaertenderwelt.ch or our blog blog.rietberg.ch
Exhibition catalogue
Gardens of the World also includes an exhibition catalogue, which tells the story of gardens in thirty essays. It traces the history of European horticulture and portrays artists who were either gardeners themselves or painted gardens.
304 pages and more than 200 illustrations. Wienand Verlag.
With contributions by twenty-one international authors.
Curators
Dr. Albert Lutz, Director Museum Rietberg Zürich
Dr. Hans von Trotha, garden and literary historian, Berlin
Programme of Events
Herb market: Whit Monday, 16 May, 10am–5pm
Whether it’s pineapple mint, green lavender cotton or lemon thyme you’re looking for: this market is devoted entirely to herbs. There will also be booths selling food and a garden studio for children that’s wholly herby. The event is being staged in cooperation with Bioterra.
Tours of the exhibition: 11am and 2pm (duration: one hour). No advance booking required.
Garden festival: Saturday, 25 June, 11am–9pm, and Sunday, 26 June, 11am–6pm
The world of gardens will celebrated in the park and all around the museum. It will include concerts performed by around fifty musicians from Zurich University of the Arts, market stands, various culinary delicacies, garden studios and regular tours of the exhibition. For details please visit www.gaertenderwelt.ch
Afternoon Tea: Sunday, 17 July and 21 August, 2–5pm
Celebrate English gardening culture with scones, clotted cream, dainty sandwiches and the right cup of tea to go with them. The afternoon tea also includes a short tour through the museum with Director Albert Lutz. Limited number of places. Ticket sales via www.starticket.ch
Other events: Talks with prominent guests from the world of gardens, garden workshops, serenade concerts, open-air cinema featuring films set in gardens, and much more. For the full accompanying programme please visit: www.gaertenderwelt.ch
Loans
The works that have come to Zurich for Gardens of the World have been loaned by renowned museums, libraries, galleries and private collections from around the globe.
The list of lenders comprises a total of sixty names: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; David Hockney, Los Angeles; MEM INC. Tokyo, Katsuya Ishida / Katsumi Omori; Eric and Louise Franck Collection, London; Musée du Louvre, Paris; Galerie Camera Obscura, Paris / Bernhard Plossu; The David Collection, Copenhagen; Museum de Fundatie, Heino/Wijhe, the Netherlands; Muzeum Narodowe w Krakowie / National Museum Cracow; Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Preussischer Kulturbesitz; Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Preussischer Kulturbesitz; Ai Weiwei, Berlin; Aando Fine Art, Berlin / Lee Nam Lee; Thomas Struth, Berlin; Kulturstiftung DessauWörlitz; Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden; Atelier Elger Esser, Düsseldorf; Universitätsbibliothek Erlangen-Nürnberg; Museum Folkwang, Essen; Museum August Kestner, Hannover; Wolfgang Laib, Hochdorf; Ludwig Habighorst, Koblenz; Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst, Cologne; Werner Nekes, Mülheim/Ruhr; Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal.
Antikenmuseum Basel and Sammlung Ludwig; Kunstmuseum Basel; Universitätsbibliothek Basel; Kunstmuseum Bern; Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern; Stiftung Bibliothek Werner Oechslin, Einsiedeln; Bibliothèque de Genève; Kunstmuseum Luzern; Benediktiner-Kollegium Sarnen; Zentralbibliothek Solothurn; Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen; Kunstmuseum Thurgau, Karthause Ittingen, Warth; Roman Signer, St. Gallen; Fotomuseum Winterthur; Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur; Kunstmuseum Winterthur; Museum Oskar Reinhart, Winterthur; Stiftung für Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte, Winterthur; Manuel Bauer, Winterthur; Barbara und Eberhard Fischer, Winterthur; Kunsthaus Zürich; Schweizerisches Nationalmuseum, Zurich; Stiftung Sammlung E.G. Bührle, Zürich; ETH-Bibliothek, Zürich; ETH-Bibliothek, Graphische Sammlung, Zurich; Zentralbibliothek Zürich; Marco Bischof, Zürich Katz Contemporary, Zurich.
Information and contact
Information, texts and images can be downloaded from www.rietberg.ch/medien
Museum Rietberg Zürich
Gablerstrasse 15
CH-8002 Zürich
T. +41 44 415 31 31 | F. +41 44 415 31 32
www.rietberg.ch,
Opening hours Tues to Sun 10am–5pm | Wed 10am–8pm
How to get there
Take tram 7 in the direction of Wollishofen, alight at the stop “Museum Rietberg” (only 4 stops from Paradeplatz). Disabled parking only.
The exposition ist supported by Parrotia Foundation, Vontobel Foundation, Swiss Re, Novartis and the Office federal of culture. In cooperation with Zürich Tourismus, Grün Stadt Zürich and Gartenjahr 2016.
Präsidialdepartement