Since 1874, the oldest and one of the most important collections of Messel fossils, which were recovered from oil shale that was around 48 million years old, have been on display in the museum. The Messel Collection is one of the figureheads of the Hessian State Museum in Darmstadt and a special cultural asset of the State of Hesse. In addition, the fossil deposit Grube Messel near Darmstadt was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List as the first German natural monument in 1995, because it allows a unique insight into the early evolution of mammals. This award from the Messel pit will mark its 25th anniversary in 2020.

The rules in the museum are different from those in everyday life. While objects of daily use are repaired, reused or maintained, the museum tries to change them as little as possible. The traces of time should be preserved, as they are important contemporary witnesses in the way society deals with its history.

The MUSEUM Jagdschloss Kranichstein searches for traces and makes the story behind the repairs and restorations of paintings, textiles, weapons and furniture visible.

An exhibition in public space and in the "Konsum Mathildenhöhe"

With the thematic exhibition TRAUTES HEIM, the Kunstforum of the TU Darmstadt is participating in the 11th Darmstadt Days of Photography and presents approx. 90 photographic works by international artists at several exhibition venues in urban areas and in the "Konsum Mathildenhöhe" - a contribution to this year's main topic "Whimsical Escapes - Humor in photography ”.

For 20 years, Robert Preyer (1930-2014) belonged to Darmstadt's art scene, living in the "City of Arts" since 1958. From his inheritance, the Kunst Archiv received large parts of the prints, etchings, lithographs and mixed techniques. The sheets live through a breathing, colour-coordinated flatness that evokes space and silence. The exhibition is dedicated to Robert Preyer's 90th birthday.

As part of the 11th Darmstadt Days of Photography, the Kunsthalle Darmstadt is showing two exhibitions with "Heide Stolz. Affairs" and "Zusammenleben. Joachim Brohm, Ute Mahler, John Myers", each with its own focus on people.

In the 1960s, Heide Stolz created a pioneering photographic work in the vicinity of the Munich avant-garde and the Heiner Friedrich Gallery, which - like many artists of her generation - has only been (re) discovered for a few years. The 11th Darmstadt Days of Photography and the Kunsthalle Darmstadt show in the exhibition "Heide Stolz. Affairs" curated by Stefan-Maria Mittendorf a selection of 60 of their photographs, including works that are being made available to the public for the first time.

As part of the 11th Darmstadt Days of Photography, the Kunsthalle Darmstadt is showing two exhibitions with "Heide Stolz. Affären" and "Zusammenleben. Joachim Brohm, Ute Mahler, John Myers", each focusing on people in their own unique way.

The exhibition "Zusammenleben", designed by Ralph Goertz, combines photographic positions by Joachim Brohm, Ute Mahler and John Myers from the 1970s and 1980s. With different questions and strategies, but with a similar intention, all three looked at their fellow human beings in an early phase of the work. Extensive image cycles emerged from projects lasting several years, which, although they have a documentary character, also testify to a deeper interest in human interaction.

Past, present, future, endure ...

Passionate and lively experience parallel existences in cosmic worlds ...

Making free art inevitably tangible in closed spaces ...

Exhibition in the showcase gallery EARLSTREET 5

Saraceno's solo exhibition "Tomás Saraceno: Songs for the Air" enables, through the use of modern technologies, new connections between people and the (environment) world as well as new forms of participation that sharpen our awareness of togetherness and social change. The exhibition thus pursues the most important concern of the artist: to create exhibitions that are neither time- nor place-specific and that point far beyond the boundaries of the museum.

Nicole Nickel's constructively built works, which reveal a closeness to Pop Art of the 1960s, are always based on the broad terrain of digital media. From a pool of newspaper clippings, which mainly depict interiors and material surfaces, she selects her image motif for her collages and puts the individual parts together in an elaborate work process.

While the individual areas can partly be identified by motif or material, the overall picture creates a confused and interwoven construct. The layered elements create their own hermeneutic spaces. This creates exciting and diffuse combinations in her collages, wall works, digital drawings and animations. Nicole Nickel plays with perspectives, views and breakthroughs.

Sculpture garden at the Spanish Tower in Park Rosenhöhe

The Darmstadt sculptor Wilhelm Loth, who died in 1993, would have turned 100 on September 24, 2020. The artist, best known for his characteristic female torsos, is still present in the cultural life of his hometown today, for example as the initiator of the Darmstadt Art Prize, which he himself received in 1955. The award, which has been named after him since 1995, is given regularly by the City of Darmstadt to renowned national and international artists. The BS Kulturstiftung has supported the award ceremony since it was founded and Wilhelm Loth has a special bond with it. In order to underline this bond, the foundation is commemorating the artist with a retrospective on the occasion of the opening of its new sculpture garden at the Spanish Tower on Darmstadt's Rosenhöhe.

The 20 or so sculptures from all of Wilhelm Loth's creative phases come mainly from the estate that is administered by his nephew Alexander Heil (Karlsruhe). As the artist's first open-air exhibition, the exhibition promises an exciting dialogue between the designed human form and the surrounding landscape on the edge of the Rosenhöhe natural monument.

On the occasion of “Heimat shopping” on 2. October, all shops in Darmstadt's city centre opene their doors until 10 pm.

With the initiative "Heimat shoppen", the Chamber of Industry and Commerce wants to strengthen the local retail trade and the local gastronomy throughout Germany in order to ensure the attractiveness of the city centres and town centres. In Darmstadt, too, retailers are taking part from 11. September to 10. October 2020 with special offers.

Autumn exhibition 2020: Under the title "STAGING IDENTITY" the Institute Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt illuminates questions about identity against the background of artistic role play in photography and film.

From October 24, 2020 to February 28, 2021, the Mathildenhöhe Institute in Darmstadt is showing an exhibition in which photography and film are used as a stage for the artistic questioning of identities. When dealing with the themes of identity, its construction, transformation and fiction, the camera is used as a mirror for the staging of the self - or of the other.

The Darmstadt Christmas Market is a popular destination each year. However, due to the current corona pandemic, the market cannot take place as usual this year. Instead, it is planned to provide a winterly alternative programme.

Genaro Strobel (*1984, Frankfurt am Main), until autumn 2020 holder of the Charlotte Prince scholarshi of the City of Darmstadt, relies on one of the oldest printing techniques with the woodcut and also transforms it into the 21st century by integrating precise laser technology. He has been producing woodcuts since 2010, using a printing technique he developed himself, which he further refined during his residency scholarship in Darmstadt. Instead of expressively connoted manual work, there is the precise cutting of machines that, with humanly impossible impossibility, produce printing blocks based on templates created on the computer. The process opens the woodcut not only for image sources such as drawing, collage and photography, but also for large formats.

The Darmstadt mammoth is American, a mastodon, and a sensation in paleontology history: in 1801, it was the first museum-assembled skeleton of an extinct large animal in the US and so significant that american president Thomas Jefferson considered the site a national affair and Alexander von Humboldt visited it during his trip to the United States. Around 1850, the skeleton came via a number of detours to Darmstadt. For more than one hundred and fifty years it has been a Darmstädter or, as one says here, a true Heiner. The exhibition "American Heiner" traces the history of this world-famous fossil elephant skeleton, which, according to its discoverer, is also called "Peale's Mastodon".

On the occasion of the 100th birthday of Joseph Beuys on May 12, 2021, the exhibition »Joseph Beuys. Ulysses« for the first time shows all six booklets by Joseph »Beuys extends the Ulysses by six further chapters on behalf of James Joyce«, as a complete work. Thanks to digitisation and new presentation methods, the exhibition makes it possible for the first time to visualise all 355 drawings of the six booklets. Beuys' immense potential of his artistic ideas and energies, which was previously closed and hidden between the six black notebooks, is now finally open to the viewer and made accessible.