EXH: “Russian Avant-Garde at the Museum Ludwig: Original and Fake. Questions, Research, Explanations” (Museum Ludwig, Cologne, until 3 Jan 2021)

Russian Avant-Garde at the Museum Ludwig: Original and Fake. Questions, Research, Explanations”
Museum Ludwig, Cologne, until 3 Jan 2021

Af­ter a long pe­ri­od in which it was ta­boo, an in­creas­ing num­ber of mu­se­ums are be­com­ing more trans­par­ent on how they deal with inau­then­tic works.

The Mu­se­um Lud­wig is pre­sent­ing re­search on the au­then­tic­i­ty of works in its col­lec­tion with a stu­dio ex­hi­bi­tion on the Rus­sian avant-garde.

The Mu­se­um Lud­wig is cur­rent­ly in­vesti­gat­ing its col­lec­tion of paint­ings with the help of in­ter­na­tio­n­al scho­lars. This re­search rep­re­sents an im­por­tant con­tri­bu­tion to the in­ter­na­tio­n­al discourse on the Rus­sian avant-garde. One goal is to iden­ti­fy and distin­guish in­cor­rect at­tri­bu­tions in the mu­se­um’s col­lec­tion.

The ex­hi­bi­tion pre­sents a plethora of find­ings. With twen­ty-sev­en works by, or former­ly at­tribut­ed to Ljubow Popowa, Kli­ment Red­ko, Niko­lai Suetin, Ni­na Ko­gan, El Lis­sitzky, and other artists, it showcases art his­tor­i­cal and tech­no­log­i­cal meth­ods for mak­ing artis­tic au­thor­ship and ques­tion­able at­tri­bu­tions rec­og­niz­able. Vis­i­tors can look be­hind the scenes and gain an un­der­s­tand­ing of provenance re­search and vari­ous in­vestiga­tive tech­niques such as in­frared and X-ray im­ages, fab­ric tests, and ma­te­rial anal­y­s­es.

A catalogue has been published alongside: “Rus­sian Avant-Garde at the Mu­se­um Lud­wig: Orig­i­nal and Fake Ques­tions, Re­search, Ex­pla­na­tions“ (in Ger­man and En­glish), Cologne: Walther König, ISBN 978-3-96098-897-7 / 29,80 eu­­ros (re­­tail price), 25 eu­­ros (mu­se­um price)