Sabine Eckmann


William T. Kemper Director and Chief Curator, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum

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Eckmann joined the Kemper Art Museum as curator in fall 1999 and also regularly teaches seminars in the Department of Art History & Archaeology in Arts & Sciences. Eckmann, a native of Nürnberg, Germany, is a specialist in 20th and 21st-century European art and visual culture with a particular focus on the intersection of art and politics, ranging from exile art and cold-war aesthetics to European post-unification art. Other research interests include avant-gardism, new art forms, media, critical theory and cultural studies.

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Eckmann wins Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award

Eckmann wins Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award

Sabine Eckmann, director of the Kemper Art Museum, has won the College Art Association’s 2016 Alfred H. Barr Award for museum scholarship.

Kemper Art Museum to present panel discussion on ‘Window | Interface’

Groundbreaking video artist Peter Campus will join curators Sabine Eckmann and Lutz Koepnick for a panel discussion relating to the exhibition Window | Interface at 6 p.m. Aug. 31. Co-curated by Eckmann and Koepnick and featuring works by Campus, the exhibition explores the ways in which electronic windows and interfaces — for example, video screens, computer monitors and cell phone displays — have come to structure the practice and experience of art today.

Window | Interface at Kemper Art Museum

This month, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present Window | Interface, an exhibition highlighting the use of windows and interfaces as both boundaries and sites of transaction between machine and mind, data and perception, the world of the body and the world of the imagination.

Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum to present panel discussion on Window | Interface Aug. 31

Peter Campus, *Prototype for Interface*Groundbreaking video artist Peter Campus will join curators Sabine Eckmann and Lutz Koepnick for a panel discussion relating to the exhibition Window | Interface at 6 p.m. Aug. 31. Co-curated by Eckmann and Koepnick and featuring works by Campus, the exhibition explores the ways in which electronic windows and interfaces — for example, video screens, computer monitors and cell phone displays — have come to structure the practice and experience of art today.

Korean Comics: A Society through Small Frames at Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum Aug. 31 to Dec. 17

*The Great General Mighty Wing*Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in Japanese manga, or comic books, in the United States, yet Korean comics remain relatively unknown. This fall, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present Korean Comics: A Society through Small Frames, a rare U.S. exhibition of work from both North and South Korea. Organized and curated by The Korea Society, the exhibition provides a decade-by-decade glimpse of the evolving social realities in contemporary Korea, as depicted in comics ranging from popular children’s entertainment to aggressive forms of political commentary.

Window | Interface at Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum Aug. 31 to Nov. 5

*screens*Windows shape and frame, both literally and figuratively, the ways we see the world around us. Interfaces represent the points of contact between different systems, spaces and entities — for example, the screen, the mouse or the keyboard that connects the computer with the human user. In August, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present Window | Interface, an exhibition highlighting the use of windows and interfaces as both boundaries and sites of transaction between machine and mind, data and perception, the world of the body and the world of the imagination.

Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum to present Reality Bites: Making Avant-garde Art in Post-Wall Germany Feb. 9 to April 29

303 Gallery, New YorkCollier Schorr, *Lina, Opening Braid, Bettringen*Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, Germany has re-emerged as a potent intellectual and creative center within the international art world. This month, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis opens Reality Bites: Making Avant-garde Art in Post-Wall Germany, the first thematic museum exhibition to examine how contemporary artists have dealt — both directly and indirectly — with the social, economic and political ramifications of German unification.

Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum to present Reality Bites: Making Avant-garde Art in Post-Wall Germany Feb. 9 to April 29

303 Gallery, New YorkCollier Schorr, *Lina, Opening Braid, Bettringen*Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, Germany has reemerged as a potent intellectual and creative center within the international art world. In February 2007, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis will present Reality Bites: Making Avant-garde Art in Post-Wall Germany, the first thematic museum exhibition to examine how contemporary artists have dealt — both directly and indirectly — with the social, economic and political ramifications of German unification.

[Grid @lt; @gt; Matrix] at Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum Oct. 25 to Dec. 31

Courtesy of Galerie Max Hetzler, BerlinDetail, Albert Oehlen *The Annihilator*The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present [Grid Matrix], the first installment in the new series “Screen Arts and New Media Aesthetics,” Oct. 25 to Dec. 31. The exhibition investigates both ruptures and continuities between these two distinct yet related modes of visual organization, exploring how the grid and the matrix have influenced our understanding of aesthetics, art and media since the early 20th century.

Pure Invention: Tom Friedman at Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum

Oren SlorTom Friedman, *There*Play-Doh, spaghetti and aluminum foil — sculptor Tom Friedman transforms mundane consumer products into playful yet meticulously crafted artworks of almost obsessive intricacy. This fall, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will inaugurate its new College of Art Gallery with Pure Invention, an exhibition of work by the renowned Washington University alumnus.

Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum to open inaugural exhibitions Oct. 25

Mildred Lane Kemper Art MuseumWillem de Kooning, *Saturday Night*Over the last 125 years, Washington University has built one of the nation’s finest university art collections by focusing primarily on the acquisition and display of contemporary work. On Oct. 25, the university will dedicate its new Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, a dramatic, light-filled structure designed to showcase the renowned permanent collection as well as a vibrant program of temporary exhibitions. The opening will feature three special exhibitions as well as thematic installations highlighting landscape, portraiture, abstraction and artworks that engage the everyday.

Background Information

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum dates back to 1881, making it the oldest art museum west of the Mississippi River. Originally located downtown, as part of Washington University’s St. Louis School and Museum of Fine Arts, the museum was rededicated in 1906 as the St. Louis Museum of Fine Arts and moved into the […]

Sabine Eckmann named director of Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum

EckmannSabine Eckmann, Ph.D., will become director of the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis effective July 1, 2005, Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton announced today. Eckmann joined the Kemper Art Museum as curator in fall 1999 and also regularly teaches seminars in the Department of Art History & Archaeology in Arts & Sciences. She succeeds Mark S. Weil, Ph.D., the E. Desmond Lee Professor for Collaboration in the Arts, who has led the museum since 1998. Weil, a longtime faculty member in art history, will retire June 30.

Women’s health focus of major exhibit for the first time

Hannah Wilke, “Intra-Venus #4, February 19, 1992,” (1992-93)Women’s bodies — nude, adorned, eroticized, abstracted — figure prominently in the history of art. Yet the art of women’s health is shockingly new. In January, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis will present Inside Out Loud: Visualizing Women’s Health in Contemporary Art, the first major museum-level exhibition dedicated to the topic. The show tracks the emergence of women’s health in American art from the early 1980s to the present, and includes approximately 50 artworks in a variety of traditional and cutting-edge media by more than 30 internationally known artists and artists’ groups.

Arts center receives key grants

A $500,000 gift from Emily Rauh Pulitzer and the $125,000 Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award will bolster the Sam Fox Arts Center.

Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum receives $125K grant

Manfred Pernice, “Untitled (Bicycle Rack),” 2002.The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis is recipient of a $125,000 Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award. The award will support Reality Bites: Making Avant-Garde Art in Post-Wall Germany, the inaugural loan exhibition in the museum’s new facilities, scheduled to open in Fall 2006.

An exile returns

Over the next two years, Exile and Modernism will travel to four German museums and one in the United States.

An exile returns

Detail from Max Beckmann’s “Four Men Around a Table” (1943).H.W. Janson (1913-1982) is among the 20th century’s most influential art historians. Since 1962, his textbook History of Art, now in its sixth edition, has been used in countless college surveys and sold four million copies in 14 languages. Yet Janson, who emigrated to the U.S. from Germany in the mid-1930s to protest Nazi cultural policies, remains little known in his former country. That’s about to change, thanks to Exile and Modernism: H.W. Janson and the Collection of Washington University in St. Louis, a touring exhibition organized by the university’s Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum.

Gallery of Art receives alumnus gift of monumental work

*Lo Sciocco Senza Paura* (The Fearless Fool) (1984), by Frank StellaNew York art collectors and patrons Ann Fertig Freedman and Robert L. Freedman have donated Lo Sciocco Senza Paura (The Fearless Fool) (1984), a major work by American artist Frank Stella, to Washington University’s Gallery of Art. The piece will be installed prior to Stella’s April 14 keynote address at the groundbreaking of the university’s new Sam Fox Arts Center.

Friday Forum:

Sabine Eckmann, curator of the Washington University Gallery of Art, and Paul Ha, director of the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, will speak on Recalling 1980s New York for the Gallery of Art’s Friday Forum series at 7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 13. CALENDAR SUMMARY WHO: Sabine Eckmann, curator, Washington University Gallery of Art, and Paul […]

American Art of the 1980s

Mark Tansey, detail, *Four Forbidden Senses (Taste, Sound, Smell, Touch)* (1982), Oil on four canvas panelsThe art world of the 1980s was a place of artistic diversity and aesthetic contention. In January, the Gallery of Art at Washington University in St. Louis will revisit those years with American Art of the 1980s: Selections From the Broad Collections, which includes 14 large-scale paintings and sculptures by 11 celebrated and sometimes controversial figures.

American Art on Paper from 1960s to Present

Sean Scully, *Untitled* (1989), Oilstick and watercolorThe Gallery of Art at Washington University in St. Louis will present American Art on Paper from the 1960s to the Present: Selections from the Permanent Collection Jan. 23 to April 18. The exhibiiton includes 47 prints, drawings and photographs by 31 nationally and internationally known artists.

Painting America in the 19th Century

William Merritt Chase (American 1849-1916), *Courtyard of a Dutch Orphan Asylum* c. 1884, Oil on canvas on boardAll roads may lead to Paris, but for 19th century American painters, many at least traveled through St. Louis. In January, the Gallery of Art at Washington University in St. Louis will present Painting America in the 19th Century: Selections from the Permanent Collection. The exhibition includes works by 13 major American painters — many of whom lived or worked in Missouri.

Influence 150: 150 Years of Shaping a City, a Nation, the World

Harriet Hosmer, Portrait of Wayman Crow, Sr., 1866, Carrara marbleSince its founding in 1853, Washington University in St. Louis has grown from a small private school to one of the nation’s premiere research universities. Influence 150: 150 Years of Shaping a City, a Nation, the World, which opens Sept. 5 at the Gallery of Art, celebrates that journey with hundreds of archival photographs, drawings, posters, letters, scrapbooks and other materials chronicling key events, people and discoveries in the life of the university.