Dear Friends,

It is a privilege to continue to share with the Neue Galerie audience the rich, complex, and sometimes demanding world of German art created between the two World Wars. Part of our mission is to present the groundbreaking art of the Neue Sachlichkeit, encompassing works made a century ago that still speak to us today. And so the Neue Galerie is proud to present “Neue Sachlichkeit / New Objectivity,” on view from February 20 through May 26, 2025.

Two recent museum exhibitions in the United States covered this topic extensively. In 2006, “Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s” was presented at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, focusing on portraiture created during the Weimar Republic. And in 2015, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art organized “New Objectivity: Modern German Art in the Weimar Republic, 1919-1933,” an exhibition that covered the entire field but did not travel to the East Coast.

A forerunner to this show at the Neue Galerie was “Berlin Metropolis, 1918-1933,” an exhibition presented in 2018 that explored architecture, fashion, theater, cinema, photography, collage, and montage. “Neue Sachlichkeit/New Objectivity” may be considered a complementary presentation, shedding new light on the diversity of the movement. We aim to show a different, multi-faceted picture with our exhibitions on this subject, focusing on paintings and drawings, but also including film, photography, design, and sculpture.

Our exhibition also honors the efforts of Gustav F. Hartlaub, an outstanding museum director who was active in Mannheim during the short-lived Weimar democracy. One hundred years ago, in 1925, Hartlaub conceived an exhibition and coined the term Neue Sachlichkeit, which became synonymous with the modernity of the Weimar era. We wish to banish the myth that Berlin was the only capital for all things modern in Germany, as Dresden and Hanover played key roles as well. The revolution in art that occurred there also took place in architecture, as domestic housing was transformed to reflect broader social changes. In summary, the Neue Sachlichkeit was not merely an art movement, but a new way of living and thinking, a new mentality that arose during a period of confusion and tension. It is our hope that the exhibition and this accompanying catalogue contribute to our understanding of the past, but also that this important development holds relevance for the present as well.

My highest praise goes to our curator Dr. Olaf Peters, who has conceived numerous insightful exhibitions for the Neue Galerie over the years, including “Degenerate Art: The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany, 1937” in 2014, “Berlin Metropolis: 1918-1933” in 2015, and “Before the Fall: German and Austrian Art of the 1930s” in 2018. He always brings enormous intelligence and scholarship to these projects. I also wish to extend profound thanks to our museum’s President, Ronald S. Lauder, whose grand vision we are honored to shepherd, and whose enthusiasm and generosity know no bounds.