Lynette Roth, curator at Harvard’s Busch Reisinger Museum which specializes in art from Germany and Northern Europe, would describe her new exhibition Made in Germany? as “pushing back against this idea that the Busch Reisinger is just a museum for German art, but actually looking into its complicated history and taking that as a cue to think about identity—institutional identity, individual identity, national identity.” Roth’s co-curator Peter Murphy, Stefan Engelhorn Curatorial Fellow in the Busch-Reisinger Museum added that the exhibit presents “a challenge to or to the expectations of what people think German art after 1980 is which we do have an art collection.”
“It was an opportunity for us to really build further and show the diverse artists and practices that were being have existed in post-war German art beyond just large scale paintings,” Murphy explained in an interview with the Independent.
Roth, Murphy, and Bridget Hinz, the show’s third curator, aspired to bring together post-war German art to display voices not as prominently heard in this category’s greater conceptualization. Women, East German, and migrant artists have historically been left out of many conversations about German art, but in the exhibition, their presence aids in redefining the German art bracket. Throughout my tour with Roth and Murphy, we discussed the importance of asking questions regarding our own definitions and assumptions about what it means to be made in Germany, as well as how we can use art as a lens to broaden our understanding of current social phenomenons both in America and abroad.
Upon entering, look to the wall opposing the white title letters to view a timeline outlining the major immigration movements and political change in Germany since the end of World War II. The exhibition, though designed prior to Germany’s state elections, comes at a crucial time as the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has just won the most parliamentary seats in Thüringen this past September. The AfD is a far-right nationalist party, and with their momentum over the last six years, Roth and Murphy described the need for conversations concerning migration, nationalism, and the rise of the far right in Germany—that we are viewers that can relate to our own experiences with the current political climate in America during our election year.
With the context from the timeline, the opening piece by Sung Tieu ties the historical context into the artist’s messaging of the show, as her work grapples with migration. Tieu was born in Vietnam in 1987 but came to Germany as a child. In her work “Multiboy,” she created what Roth described as a “deconstructed readymade” comprising an old yellow food processor in a prison-like metal box. The work is in conversation with the Vietnamese labor migrants in what was formerly East Germany, a program that started in the 1980s. The Multiboy food processor was one of the products produced by labor migrants, presenting an interesting correlation; just as labor migrants quickly and efficiently produce goods, the food processor embodies the concept of work being done for you. Both represent productivity done behind the scenes for the sake of others.
Tieu accompanies the sculpture with three print references of work agreements between companies and Vietnamese labor migrants, displaying the complex language used to disguise the overt power dynamics as a mutually beneficial relationship. “A lot of it is also about the bureaucratic languages and systems that…literally move people,” said Roth, with Murphy pointing out the “slang-filled obtuse language” that is often used to manipulate the intentions of worker contracts.
Rounding the wall, emotions wheeled when I came face to face with an expansive work by Katharina Sieverding, first shown in 1992, titled “Deutschland wird deutscher XLI/92.” The work stands at around an impressive 10 ft by 14 ft. Hung on a temporary steel grated wall, the dark metal print reads its namesake through removed color in an image of Sieverding’s veiled face surrounded by knives. The term translates to “Germany becomes more German,” taken from a newspaper article about the prominence of Germans questioning Germany’s place in the European Union post-unification.
Roth described Sieverding’s acknowledgment of a movement towards a more isolationist Germany as well as an increase in violence post-unification. She explained that the term also points out that “the fascist past is not all that distant,” and that at the time, the controversial choice caused outcry and contradicted a specific view of what it meant to be “more German.” Town Hall meetings were held alongside press conferences—with this piece, in Roth’s words, Sieverding asked: “What can art do?”
In response to Sieverding’s question, Roth asked her own. “I thought, ‘That’s the question I hope we’re also asking, right?’ Art is participating in our contemporary discussions, right? Or if it’s not, it should be,” she said. Roth believes we should all be “really thinking, thinking through…the challenges that we face as a society by also looking to artists.”
Some of the other works that stood out to me were a monumental post-unification film by Hito Steyerl, authentic photographs of East German neighborhoods by Gundula Schulze Eldowy, an expansive photobook by Ulrich Wüst, and an illuminating projector slide series by Candida Höfer emphasizing the invisibility of Turkish immigrants in West Germany in 1979.
Alas, it was upon entering a room flipped on its side, with chairs on the wall and bookshelves on the floor that I truly lost my breath. This installation, set in a rectangular gallery space, comprises a fully dressed living room of furniture from East Germany. The artist Henrike Naumann, born in 1984, just five years before the wall fell, wanted to highlight how the world flipped on its head for East Germans after unification. The title, “Ostelgie,” combines ost, which means east, and nostalgie, to create “nostalgia for the east.”
The furnishings are pieces bought by East Germans from West Germany, with references to the Flintstones represented by bones laid in the carpet, a fur-covered couch, and a dinosaur-styled landline. The reference highlights how East Germany was somewhat living in the past compared to the West, so at the time of unification, the East was starting from behind. Regarding the furniture, Murphy explained that upon the fall of the wall, East Germans finally “had access to this open, free market where they could collect all these goods and exciting furniture that they thought were super futuristic, when in fact they were already out of fashion.”
Naumann visually portrays the disorientation of the Eastern citizens who were invited late to the game, with Murphy adding that during lectures and presentations on the work, the artist “beautifully describes…the ways in which, one day, she was living in a socialist system, and then literally overnight, that system toppled over,”—literally turning her by 90 degrees. Murphy went on to ask: “What is it like to now navigate this kind of unknown terrain of the new capitalist sovereign nation of Germany?”
Overall, I truly believe everyone should visit the Harvard Art Museum and explore the Made in Germany? exhibition. Additional information and talks with the artists shared on YouTube and Instagram allow everyone to have an in-depth understanding of the works on display. The show is vitally important, as we can use the context to think about the current political state of America and our opportunities in the upcoming election.
The question mark in the title imparts a final message from the curators.“We’re sort of putting it out there, and we’re saying these are actually just topics we need to all be engaged with, and that artists are kind of helping us think through in, we think, often very surprising ways, very different ways,” Roth said. So, as you explore the show, consider your own questions, and help the curators and artists start the conversations.
Maddy Tunnell ’26 (maddytunnell@college.harvard.edu) writes Arts for the Independent.