Freedom of Art

In 2017, the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection curated the exhibition “Serial Formations 1967/2017. Re-staging of the first German Exhibition of International Tendencies in Minimalism” (curator: Renate Wiehager) at the Mercedes-Benz Contemporary exhibition space in Berlin. In a modified form, this exhibition is now moving to its second location at the Museum Giersch in Frankfurt, where its title will be “Freiraum der Kunst – Die Studio Galerie der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt 1964–1968” (Freedom for art – the Studio Gallery of the Goethe University Frankfurt 1964–1968 / curator: Manfred Großkinsky).
The Studio Gallery, which was run by the general student committee, organized exhibitions, happenings, and fluxus concerts involving famous German and international avant-garde artists from 1964 to 1968 at the university’s Bockenheim campus. These activities were seen as the students’ contribution to the democratization of society and documented the cultural mood of optimism in the 1960s. The climax of the Studio Gallery’s events was the “Serial Formations” exhibition curated by Peter Roehr and Paul Maenz in 1967. For the first time this brought together representatives of American minimal art with European works and it can now be re-staged at Giersch Museum Frankfurt as a result of the cooperation with the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection. The exhibition about the Studio Gallery can be seen as the contribution of art history to the “50 Jahre ‘68” (50 years ‘68) project at the Goethe University.