The founder and patron of the Folkwang Museum in Hagen, Karl Ernst Osthaus, collected works of art from various genres, styles, periods and regions in the spirit of his art reform movement (also known as the ‘Hagen Impulse’). At the turn of the 20th century, after two long journeys to the Mediterranean region and North Africa, he specifically collected works of ‘Islamic art’. After his early death in 1921, and the sale of his collections in 1922/23, these holdings were transferred to the new Museum Folkwang in Essen together with the art collections. In the course of the reconstruction of the Museum Folkwang after the Second World War, additional works were purchased for the museum, which were assigned to the collection Arts of Islam.
Osthaus had established practices of displaying European and so-called ‘non-western’ art side by side since the museum’s opening in 1902, thus staging an encounter between the arts of different cultures. This practice was continued by Ernst Gosebruch, director of the Museum Folkwang, from 1922 onwards. The current presentation of the collection which has been in place since 2019 is based on this tradition of a ‘school of seeing’.
Against this background, the conference aims to continue an ongoing conversation about the museography and historiography of the Arts of Islam and its musealization, and to develop new insights and questions that are informative for the Essen collection and beyond. The results will be incorporated into the exhibition ‘Karl Ernst Osthaus and the Arts of Islam’ (working title), which will be on show at the Museum Folkwang in 2026.
The international conference will be embedded in a critical examination of terminologies and concepts, including the use and problems of the term ‘Islamic art’ itself. The keynote lecture will be given by Prof. Avinoam Shalem.
Participation in the conference is free of charge. Please registrate by 20 April 2025 at: symposium(at)museum-folkwang.essen.de.