Exhibitions

Harry Graf Kessler – art collector, patron of the arts, publisher, diplomat and dandy – is an acute observer in his time. He recorded his perceptions in the diaries he kept throughout a period of more than six decades.

Kessler registered the upheavals of his time (1868-1937) with great sensitivity and consequently delivers insights that are so unique – on over 15,000 written pages. The current relevance of Kessler’s person and perception is presented by the exhibition in the Max Liebermann House on Pariser Platz. It takes you directly to the heart of the text in the diary: it presents both Kessler’s multifaceted and contradictory mental universe. Using media installations, the show sets a complex kaleidoscope in motion that is characteristic of Kessler’s diaries. The associative and sensual manner of the media projections introduce the visitor to the world where the quotes have originated.

Kessler’s Method of Sensual Perception
A look at Kessler’s biographical background explains his analytical view, which he focused on his social environment and the events of his time: born in Paris and as a cosmopolitan of English-German heritage – newly ennobled, highly educated and homosexual Kessler stood between the mileus and ideologies of his time.

He was a person caught between the times. This outsider perspective made him particularly sensitive to recognizing contradictions in others. Kessler recorded the imagery of words with all their “details” and “values” – his favourite categories – in photographic snapshots. Sensuality becomes the film through which he experiences art and the life that surrounds him.
The Art Mediator: Art as Life Principle

Kessler shaped cultural life around 1900 and was essential in making Impressionists and Neo-impressionists popular in Germany. During his entire life he believed in the character-forming power of art, for him the path to salvation for the contemporary, innerly torn individual. Even his own spectacular art collection in the imperial age was dedicated to this concept. His focus here and in his function as museum director was on mediation: consequently, the exhibition on the ground floor of the Max Liebermann House is presented as an art salon; a mixture of public exhibition and private space. Unique original specimens and installations thereby provide an impression of Kessler’s artistic ideals.

The People Collector
The moments described in the diaries are influenced by people, who Kessler encountered in his excessive social life and who he observed. In the most significant diary entries, Kessler thus succeeds in drawing conclusions about the physiognomy of his time. The diary entries present no less than 12,000 persons who he met in salons, at court balls or on journeys, in ateliers or theatres – including Einstein, van de Velde, Grosz, Rathenau, Stresemann or the German Emperor. The ‘People Collector’ room of the exhibition is designed as an interactive installation, where visitors can choose from the abundance of people, anecdotes and Berlin descriptions to form an individual picture of Kessler’s acute observational skills.

Kessler Today
Parts of Kessler’s diaries were missing for many years. Today’s complete edition of the diaries enables a holistic view of Kessler and allows the reader to discover how relevant many of Kessler’s questions at that time are even today: How can our perspective go beneath the surface – to a world where the surfaces have become even more powerful and tumultuous as they ever were in Kessler’s time? How do we deal with the core experience of modernity that the world is in danger of falling apart? In a film, interview partners explain our fascination with Kessler today.

Kessler was a homo communicans: one of his predominant activities was to speak with and about people, reflect upon events and experiences. If Kessler were alive today, he would be connected with his community via social media: we accompany the exhibition on Facebook and Twitter with authentic quotes from the diaries.