Enfilade

Now on view at the Huguenot Museum:

Chodowiecki 300: Zwischen Kunst und Konfession

Hugenottenmuseum, Berlin, 19 June — 25 October 2026

To mark the 300th anniversary of the birth of Daniel Chodowiecki (1726–1801), the Huguenot Museum Berlin presents the special exhibition Chodowiecki 300: Between Art and Congregation, highlighting the dynamic interplay between the celebrated artist’s acclaimed body of work and his deep roots in Berlin’s Huguenot community. The exhibition showcases a selection of drawings, prints, historical books, medals, and decorative arts from the archives and collections of the French Church of Friedrichstadt. The works Chodowiecki created for the church navigate in a virtuoso manner between Reformed faith, enlightenment ideals, civic engagement, and creative freedom. His iconic images and works have left a lasting mark on the Französischer Dom and the neighboring Friedrichstadtkirche and have profoundly shaped the commemorative culture of the Huguenot community in Berlin and Brandenburg.

A special highlight of the exhibition are Chodowiecki’s original handdrawn designs for the architectural sculptures on the Französischer Dom from the arts collection of the Academy of Arts, which have returned to their original historical context for the first time. Although best known as a master of miniatures, Chodowiecki designed large-scale statues and reliefs featuring allegorical and biblical themes, forming a complex theological visual program and reflecting the identity of the Huguenot community at the time.

Valuable documents from the French Church archives complement the exhibition. Chodowiecki’s unpublished, handwritten autobiography (ca. 1782) and the minutes of the board meeting reveal tense negotiations between the artist, the church, and the Prussian state. The historical documents offer not only direct insight into the artist’s creative process but also possess a dynamic that feels strikingly contemporary, echoing today’s debates regarding art in public spaces.

Part of the international anniversary year Chodowiecki300, the exhibition is funded and supported by the Berlin State Office for the Preservation of Monuments, the Academy of Arts Berlin, and the French Church of Berlin.

Now on view in Coburg (near Nuremberg) . . .

Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki: Art – Family – Morality

Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg, 9 July – 25 October 2026

Marking the 300th anniversary of the birth of Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki (1726–1801), this studio exhibition at the Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg offers insight into the artist’s diverse body of works on paper. Duke Franz Friedrich Anton of Coburg (1750–1806) was an admirer of Chodowiecki’s work, acquiring over 4,000 prints and around 200 drawings. The exhibition focuses on personal sketches of close family members and collaborative artistic endeavors, as well as print series shaped by the ideals of the Enlightenment.

Now on view:

J’ai descendu dans mon jardin… Destinées de Candide

I Went Down into My Garden… Destinies of Candide

Château de Voltaire, Ferney-Voltaire, 4 June 2026 — 3 January 2027

Come and (re)discover the famous tale written by Voltaire in 1759 in Geneva and everything it still has to teach us today, at the château de Voltaire! The exhibition takes curious visitors to the heart of Candide’s imaginary garden, following him on his many journeys.

If there is one work by Voltaire that is truly universally known, it is Candide. Who has not heard of the love affair between this singular character and the beautiful Cunégonde, or of his journey to El Dorado? The success of this little tale, written at Les Délices, surprised even its author, who was probably more interested in his historical works or philosophical treatises. Yet the prodigious success of the work has never waned. Dozens of imitations were produced in the decades following its publication. In the 20th century, one of the most popular operas in the United States was created, thanks to Bernstein, on Voltaire’s theme. The cinema, in turn, has not failed to pay tribute to the tale, whose eponymous character, played in Norbert Carbonneaux’s version by Jean-Pierre Cassel, remains in everyone’s mind more than sixty years later.

At the centre of the story is the garden, which Candide tells us must be ‘cultivated’. As the starting point—and end point—of the exhibition, the garden is examined in its biographical dimensions (Voltaire came up with the idea at the same time as he was developing his own garden, at Les Délices), philosophical dimensions (to what extent did Voltaire refer to the Ancients for this particular element?), religious (doesn’t Candide’s garden compete with the Garden of Eden?) and literary (since Boccaccio, hasn’t the garden been the best place to converse and indulge in the pleasures of literature?) But to reach this garden, we have to go through all sorts of stages and follow the Voltairean hero on his many peregrinations. So let’s travel with Candide.

This journey will allow us to assess the impact of the tale at the beginning of the 21st century. At a time when we seem to be losing our bearings, does Candide still have something to say to us? Do we still have the means to understand what Voltaire, in the heart of the 18th century, was trying to convey to his contemporaries? Or perhaps, on the contrary, our decaying period is paradoxically the best time to reread Voltaire’s prose and listen attentively to the lessons of Pangloss? That would be an amusing turn of events. Quickly, then, let us re-open this magical book, and follow our hero step by step, just as he himself tried to pursue the beautiful Cunégonde, despite the difficulties and through a thousand obstacles.

Exhibition presented by the Centre des monuments nationaux, the fruit of collaboration between the Société Voltaire, the Centre international d’étude du XVIIIe siècle, the Association Voltaire à Ferney, and the Bibliothèque de Genève.

Scientific commissioner
Flávio Borda d’Água, Loïc Dechambenoit, Stéphanie Géhanne Gavoty, François Jacob, Ulla Kölving, and André Magnan

Installation view of the exhibition My Story: Antike Frauenporträts und ihr Nachleben
(Wien: Kunsthistorisches Museum)

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The two works at the center of this exhibition, now on view at the KHM, were owned by Marchese Tommaso Obizzi (1750–1803), who lived nar Padua. A core portion of the museum’s Collection of Historic Musical Instruments also belonged to Obizzi.

My Story: Ancient Female Portraits and Their Afterlife

Vitrine Extra #8

Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 17 April — 20 September 2026

Curated by Manuela Laubenberger and Ulrike Müller-Kaspar

This installation presents two previously unseen portraits of women, offering direct and surprising insights into current research on Roman portraits. The Collection of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the Kunsthistorisches Museum houses around 250 Roman marble portraits. Their particular impact lies, to this day, in the immediacy with which they bring people from a distant past to life. In this special exhibition, the ancient sculptures themselves take the floor, telling us about their appearance and the central role played by an often-underestimated detail: their hairstyle. This allows us to explore key questions in portrait research—from dating to identity.

Portrait of Julia Titi: Head Flavian, late 1st century CE; bust 16th century, marble (Vienna: KHM).

This special exhibition is part of a comprehensive research project dedicated to the ‘biographies’ of ancient sculptures. At its heart lies the question: how can a work be assessed when it no longer reflects its state upon discovery, but bears the traces of a long post-ancient history? For many portraits were altered on multiple occasions—not just since the Renaissance, but as early as antiquity. Heads were given new hairstyles, adapted to changing fashions or for pragmatic reasons such as a shortage of materials. Thus, a portrait was repeatedly reinterpreted and reshaped.

The most important dating criterion for research remains the hairstyle, which closely follows the fashions of the respective imperial court. Simultaneously, the alterations reveal how works of art were adapted to the tastes of the time. Damage caused by centuries of storage was also repaired to make the pieces presentable once more. A particularly revealing example in the special exhibition is a proud Roman woman who originally wore the curly hairstyle of Empress Domitia, before being given a braided wreath in the style of Empress Helena in a later alteration. Modern methods such as material analysis and restoration studies reveal these interventions and help distinguish original from additions. Restoration thus becomes a search for clues that uncovers hidden stories.

The project is part of an international research network that is increasingly dedicated to female portraits—long a marginal topic. Collaborations, interdisciplinary approaches and digital reconstructions open up new perspectives on the role of these portraits in ancient society, their symbolic meanings, as well as their varied reception from antiquity to the modern era.

In the Roman Empire, coins were far more than a means of payment: they served as vehicles for imperial visual policy and disseminated the portraits of the ruling dynasty throughout the empire. With impressive precision, even the smallest spaces feature meticulously rendered hairstyles—models that private individuals also used as inspiration for their own portraits on funerary busts, tomb reliefs, or sarcophagi. Since the Renaissance, researchers have used these details, together with the inscriptions, to identify and date marble portraits.

At the heart of the exhibition are two very different portraits of women—both marked by interventions and alterations.

One of the busts is thought to depict the deified Julia (61–89 AD), daughter of Emperor Titus and niece of Emperor Domitian of the Flavian dynasty. She wears a distinctive hairstyle with a lock of hair falling over her forehead, a feature indicative of her rank and the era. The body is a sophisticated montage of ancient fragments—a capital and architectural ornamentation, added in the sixteenth century—so skilfully executed that the alterations went unnoticed for a long time. Here, ancient material meets early modern creative intent.

Funerary relief of an elderly woman in the style of the ‘Great Herculaneum Woman’, now separated from its origional sculptural context (Vienna: KHM).

The second exhibit—a funerary relief of an elderly woman in the style of the ‘Great Herculaneum Woman’—tells a different story. She too wears a hairstyle typical of the period, identifying her as a contemporary of Julia. Her precious, traditional clothing suggests she was a wealthy woman. Yet her original context has been lost: cut out of a larger setting, the frame and accompanying figures, such as her husband, are now missing.

Both works presumably reached the Venetian art market via maritime trade from Attica and from there, in the eighteenth century, entered the collection of the Marchese Tommaso Obizzi (d. 1803), who established his own museum of antiquities in his castle at Catajo near Padua. The other selected portraits of women in the collection expand this perspective and unfold an impressive panorama of female self-representation in antiquity—multifaceted, changeable, and astonishingly vivid.

The Vitrine Extra series of presentations, held within the permanent exhibition of the Kunsthistorisches Museum’s Collection of Greek and Roman Antiquities, periodically explores various aspects of classical Antiquity, throwing a new light on old artefacts by showcasing objects long in storage or newly restored, analysed and researched, things that are fascinating and amusing, curious, and inspiring. This particular exhibition was curated by Manuela Laubenberger, curator of the Collection of Greek and Roman Antiquities and the Ephesos Museum at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, and Ulrike Müller-Kaspar, art historian and project collaborator.