Images of Disability
Mon, 17 March – Sun, 30 March 2025
| 14 years and older |
| German |
| Humboldt Lab, 1st floor |
| Opening hours Mon, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat, Sun: 10:30 am – 6:30 pm Tue: closed |
“The figure of disability checks out of the asylum, the sick house, and the hospital to take up residence in the art gallery, the museum, and the public square.”
These words by the American cultural scientist Tobin Siebers resonate in a contradictory way in the collection created a century earlier by Hans Würtz (1875-1958). In the midst of the political turmoil and cultural productivity of the Weimar Republic, the then director of education at the Oskar-Helene-Heim in Berlin compiled what is probably the most extensive collection of pictures and art depicting disabled people known.
As part of an international research project, the collection archived in exile in Prague has been digitised and catalogued. The exhibition at the Humboldt Labor provides an insight into this extraordinary collection, which consists primarily – but not exclusively – of reproductions. Without ignoring the unusual concepts that the collector developed with regard to disability, the exhibition shows selected pictures and statuettes and places them in new contexts.
The intervention is located in the seminar room of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, behind the exhibition ‘After Nature’ on the first floor of the Humboldt Forum.
An exhibition by the Institute of Rehabilitation Sciences, Chair of Prof. Dr Oliver Musenberg with the collaboration of Dr Sebastian Pampuch, in cooperation with Prof. Dr Simon McKeown from Teesside University in Middlesbrough, England, as well as the National Medical Library and the Jedlička Institute in Prague, Czech Republic.
The exhibition is part of the international research project ‘Images and Imaginations of “Damage” and Disability in the Hans Würtz Collection’ (2021-2025), funded by the German Research Foundation and the British Arts and Humanities Research Council. Project management: Prof Dr Oliver Musenberg (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) and Prof Dr Simon McKeown (Teesside University, UK).