Chariklia Papadopoulou sends you straight to the afterlife. If the head of the supervisor was only allowed to show one exhibit from her whole house, it would be the sublime piece that rests very far down in the depths of the State Museum of Egyptian Art, in the belief in the afterlife room: “You have to go to the golden mask when you go into your eyes look, she looks back.” So down, following the winding brass band that, like Ariadne’s thread, leads into the labyrinth and hopefully out again. A real help, because apparently half of Maxvorstadt met down here on Saturday evening between sarcophagi and grave finds. At the end of the path she is already waiting, with a calm smile, full of grandeur she holds down the light silver gaze from her white pedestal, the king’s daughter and king’s sister Sat-Djehuti from Theben-West. “Well,” asks Chariklia Papadopoulou, who is still orchestrating the streams of people pouring in from the entrance when you reappear, “did she greet you?”
The golden coffin body of the king’s child has plenty to do with welcome announcements that evening. The people of Munich are crowding into the State Museum of Egyptian Art. Even if the queues are far less long than in the pre-Corona years: The classics among the local temples to the muses are once again having an impact on the public, whether it’s the Bavarian State Painting Collections, Lenbachhaus, Glyptothek, Haus der Kunst or Villa Stuck. The curatorially freshly brushed and partly reopened German Museum is also a favorite of night owls.
Waffled with the admission tickets
People are drawn out to stroll through the art of the city, finally a mild evening again, depending on the location, they chat with a bottle of Hellem, a glass of white wine or their own child in and on the hand before they continue walking, the variety behind to discover wide open doors. According to initial estimates by the organizers, around 28,000 visitors bought tickets for the Long Night of Munich Museums this year – the second in times of the pandemic. Including many younger people.
This was once the health center on Dachauer Straße, now it’s Kunstlabor 2, more precisely: Octavi Serra’s Escape Room.
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
Instead of a wristband, this time there is the all-in card, which has to be laboriously dug out of the pocket at every entrance as an electronic QR code on the cell phone or as an increasingly battered scrap of paper. In the Pinakothek der Moderne, the fuss is not an issue an hour after the start, because the crowds only push in later – there will be over 10,000 guests in total. Under the rotunda there is still plenty of room for a roaming sheep that likes to run into a pillar or follow children’s legs. The actor in sheep’s clothing is part of the action program “Unexpected”. The unexpected events also include Lina Zylla’s sound collage upstairs in the room, where Joseph Beuys’ 44 huge basalt stones also visually throb. The artist uses a microphone to record the dot, dot, comma, line concert, which visitors put on paper with a pencil in front of their microphone; played on top of each other in loops: powerful music for a heavy work of art.
Armin Scheibenzuber and Behin Bodaghi put down their pen and sing the praises of the museum night: “At this late hour everything appears in a different light, in a different atmosphere,” says the 32-year-old. “With performances, art really comes to life. It’s very exciting.” Iranian Bodaghi has been studying art, music, theater and German at LMU for four years and considers the Long Night a “good opportunity to get to know art from Europe and around the world”.
“Abused. Betrayed! Hope?” – more than 100 participants are involved in the moving art action in the Herz-Jesu-Kirche.
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
It is an evening of moments – go in where you have long wanted to cross the threshold: in the AudiMax cinema hall of the University of Television and Film Munich (HFF), for example. In the early evening it is already so packed that the guests have to stand next to the red plush armchairs and watch a young barmaid act out her coin neurosis on the screen. In the “Espace Louis Vuitton Munich” on Maximilianstraße, an exhibition space still unknown to many, it is not bags that can be inspected, but South African art. In the Munich Künstlerhaus on Lenbachplatz, the head of the lithography workshop, Raquel Ro, prints cards with the guests and has her hands full right from the start. In front of her door, dancers on the stairwell become the work of art of the night. On Saturday, the European Patent Office at Hackerbrücke will be guiding visitors through its own art collection for the first time. “The popularity of our offer has exceeded all expectations,” says spokesman Luis Berenguer Gimenez.
The shuttle buses swarm out every ten minutes for tours in all directions. Heading west, past the hot spot for young people, Kunstlabor 2, the temporary use of the former health center on Dachauer Strasse, where creative forces blast open former offices like cell doors from the inside.
Screaming choirs from heaven and deafening bass
Possibly the most moving place of this night of the 80 art rooms is the Herz-Jesu-Kirche in Neuhausen. For almost an hour, carried by more than 100 participants, a composition that has become dance, music and image rises up here with trembling force about the abuse experienced in the church. Deaf basses, screaming heavenly choirs of the Bavarian State Orchestra and black balloons hover over white masked dancers of soul distress. Among them were members of the Independent Advisory Board for Affected Persons of the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising. For the finale, the children’s choir of the Bavarian State Opera begins: “Lord, have mercy.”
There is an art to capturing life in this city in one night.