The short version
- The Bode-Museum in Berlin opens Sound Bodies on November 24, a show that pairs musical instruments with artworks that depict music.
- Three of Berlin’s state collections made it together, including the city’s musical instrument museum.
- One object shown is a plexiglass violin made by a prisoner of war in Foggia, Italy, in 1946.
Sound Bodies – Variations on a Theme of Art opens at the Bode-Museum on Berlin’s Museum Island on Tuesday, November 24, and runs to Sunday, March 7. The museum calls it “a musical intervention.” Historical and modern musical instruments are placed beside works in the collection that show music being made: late antique textiles, medieval angel choirs and Antonio Canova’s Dancer. The aim, in the museum’s words, is to trace “the sound of selected objects” and to “make art visible and audible.”
It is a joint show of three state collections: the Bode-Museum’s sculpture and Byzantine art collection, the contemporary art museum Hamburger Bahnhof, and the Musikinstrumenten-Museum, Berlin’s musical instrument collection. The one instrument the museum has pictured so far is a violin made of plexiglass by F. Krolikowski, a prisoner of war in Foggia, Italy, in 1946.
The museum is at Am Kupfergraben, entered from the Monbijou bridge, and is partly wheelchair accessible. It is closed Mondays and open 10:00 to 17:00 on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, to 20:00 on Thursday and to 18:00 at weekends. The page does not give a ticket price or say whether any instrument will be played, so check before you go.
