Aby Warburg. Mnemosyne Bilderatlas – Colloquium

As part of the »Aby Warburg. Mnemosyne Bilder Atlas. Reconstruction – Commentary – Update« exhibition, the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe invites you to an international colloquium on 13^th and 14^th October 2016. Leading personalities in Warburg research will present their new findings over these two days and expand the exhibition to include the latest state of discussion.

With the exhibition curated by Roberto Ohrt and Axel Heil, the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe is presenting a complete reconstruction of the Mnemosyne Image Atlas in original format, along with two boards with the original diagrams that Aby Warburg himself used.

The Image Atlas is indisputably the last major work by the recognised Hamburg-based cultural historian, but remained incomplete due to his sudden death in October 1929 and had only rarely been analysed in greater detail before the end of the 20^th century. The 63 boards – a monumental fragment with close to a thousand images and without explanatory text – has acquired legendary status in the last 50 years, through which many normally defensive speculations and fewer substantiated assessments have circulated. In the field of art and cultural history, the Atlas is still a challenging exception, which has not been imitated. The exhibition in the ZKM is presenting this unusual piece for the first time with a detailed commentary on all the boards and aims to put up for discussion Warburg’s invention on this basis as an instrument of research.