University collection on display again for the first time TU Braunschweig and the Städtisches Museum present 'EXCAVATED! Realisms from Aristide Maillol to the ZEBRA Group'

From 14th March to 8th June 2025, the Städtisches Museum Braunschweig is showing the ‘Strassner Collection’ of Technische Universität Braunschweig at the Haus am Löwenwall. The exhibition was curated by TU Braunschweig and organised in cooperation with the Städtisches Museum.

The exhibition ‘EXCAVATED! Realisms from Aristide Maillol to the ZEBRA Group’ offers for the first time an almost complete insight into a university collection whose holdings have been dispersed for decades and some of which have even been stolen. Thanks to a comprehensive cataloguing project funded by the Braunschweig Cultural Heritage Foundation, 104 of the original 120 works have been recovered and prepared for a joint presentation.

The TU Braunschweig University Collection occupies a special position. It was founded in the 1950s to 1970s by the regionally networked artist and professor Ernst Straßner for the former Braunschweig University of Education. Intended as a teaching collection for the art faculty, the works also found their place in the university buildings. In the following years, Straßner’s assistant Rudolf Schönhöfer added contemporary prints to the collection. These were later followed by works by Straßner himself.

The opening of the exhibition will take place on Thursday 13th March at 6 p.m. at the Haus am Löwenwall. Speakers will include museum director Dr. Peter Joch, Prof. Dr. Angela Ittel, president of TU Braunschweig, and Dr. Laura Breede, curator of the exhibition, TU Braunschweig.

“How does an art collection come into being at a technical university? The Straßner Collection was founded in the post-war years and thus tells not only an art-historical but also a socio-political story. It is also an example of how art and science are not opposites, but rather inspire each other. This is precisely why this indexing project at TU Braunschweig is groundbreaking,” says TU president Prof. Dr. Angela Ittel. “My thanks also go to the Städtisches Museum Braunschweig, whose cooperation has enabled us to make the collection accessible to a wide public outside the university.”

The exhibition, which spans around 90 years, brings together paintings and prints by internationally renowned artists such as Aristide Maillol, Ida Kerkovius, Lovis Corinth, Maria Caspar-Filser, Hans Purrmann, Max Pechstein, Gerhard Marcks and Willem Grimm. Works by Horst Antes, Walter Dexel, Gerd Winner, Axel Dick, Rupprecht Geiger and Peter Nagel are also on display. The works are recontextualised thematically to illustrate the stylistic range – from colourful, almost visionary landscapes to urban structures, experimental forms and figurative representations in dissolution.

The exhibition also raises questions about the origins and whereabouts of individual works and critically examines the different phases of the collection. The project aims not only to present the artistic complexity, but also to promote a transparent reappraisal of the collection’s history.

“For almost two years I have been researching the genesis and history of the collection, as well as the individual pieces. It is all the more important to me that we can now make these results visible,” says the collection’s curator, Dr. Laura Breede. “The exhibition not only focuses on the history of the collection and critically examines the initiator of the collection, Straßner, and his biography. Above all, it focuses on the works in the collection and places them in the context of post-war art discourses.”

Speaking on behalf of the Städtisches Museum as a cooperation partner, director Dr. Peter Joch says: “The exhibition in our museum has a special feature: the Straßner collection is a perfect complement to our famous collection of forms assembled by Walter Dexel. Two educational collections are now coming together, each inviting a comparative view and revealing fundamental aesthetic laws. In both cases, the artistic quality goes far beyond any educational mediation. This makes the Straßner exhibition an ideal project for us.”