In coordination with the special exhibition, “Paula Modersohn-Becker: Ich bin Ich / I Am Me,” Neue Galerie New York is delighted to host a lecture series with a focus on various aspects of Paula Modersohn-Becker’s life and work.

Limited space is available for programs at the Neue Galerie, so please be sure to register in advance for tickets. See below to reserve and purchase tickets. If you would like assistance, please email [email protected] or call +1 (212) 994-9493.

To learn more about the variety of programs offered by the Neue Galerie, consider subscribing to our newsletter.

SUBSCRIBE

Members of the Neue Galerie get priority access to programming at the Neue Galerie. We encourage you to join as a Member to take advantage of these opportunities.

JOIN NOW

PAULA MODERSOHN-BECKER: BECOMING ME

Jill Lloyd, Art Historian, Writer, Curator

Exhibition curator Jill Lloyd will deliver an opening night lecture exploring Paula Modersohn-Becker’s tenacious battle for independence, both as an artist and a woman during her short yet extremely intense and productive career. She will describe Modersohn-Becker’s interaction with artists and writers of her times, including the poet Rainer Maria Rilke.

Organized in conjunction with A Weekend with Paula Modersohn-Becker.

Thursday, June 6, 6:30 P.M.

PAULA MODERSOHN-BECKER: THE FIRST MODERN WOMAN ARTIST

Diane Radycki, Art Historian, Professor and Gallery Director Emerita, Moravian College

"Ich bin Ich ('I am me'), and I hope to become me more and more. This surely is the point of all our struggles." In her lecture, Diane Radycki looks at the "me" Paula Modersohn-Becker struggled to become: at her place in the history of art, including her redefinition of the female nude, and at her ever-growing posthumous reputation. A mere twenty years after a lifetime of no recognition, she became the first European woman artist to be honored with her own museum (1927). In this century she became the earliest woman artist to be displayed in the permanent collection galleries of the Museum of Modern Art (2017).

Thursday, June 27, 6:30 P.M.

CURATOR CONVERSATION: PAULA MODERSOHN-BECKER AND KÄTHE KOLLWITZ

Starr Figura, Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, The Museum of Modern Art
Jay A. Clarke, Rothman Family Curator of Prints and Drawings, The Art Institute of Chicago

Moderated by Janis Staggs, Director of Curatorial and Manager of Publications, Neue Galerie New York

Join us for a moderated conversation between curators Starr Figura and Jay A. Clarke about two major females in the history of German Expressionism and the imprint they left on art history of the twentieth century and beyond.

Thursday, July 11, 6:30 P.M.

CREATIVE ACTS

Anne Higonnet, Barbara Novak Professor of Art History, Barnard College

​​How to express the hopes, fears, and physical experience of pregnancy or birth? Such subjects remained invisible until women began to become confident professional artists. This talk looks at some of the beautiful solutions to a vital human challenge, including works by Berthe Morisot, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Louise Bourgeois, Heiji Shin, and Carmen Winant.

Thursday, August 1, 6:30 P.M.

REGISTER HERE 

"FERVOR OF MOTHERLY LOVE”: THE RECEPTION OF PAULA MODERSOHN-BECKER’S ART IN WEIMAR GERMANY

Michelle Vangen, Adjunct Professor, Kingsborough College

When Paula Modersohn-Becker died in 1907, she was essentially unknown as a painter. Within just two decades of her death, however, she had become the first woman artist in Germany to have a museum devoted to her art. In her talk, Michelle Vangen will explore how Modersohn-Becker’s fascination with motherhood, a theme she addressed repeatedly in her art, led to her rise to national renown in the 1920s. During a time when traditional gender roles were in flux, conservative art critics and collectors celebrated Modersohn-Becker’s ability to give visual form to the “fervor of motherly love.”

Thursday, August 22, 6:30 P.M.

REGISTER HERE 

"I AGITATE AGAINST YOU WITH A THOUSAND TONGUES OF LOVE”: PAULA MODERSOHN-BECKER AND RAINER MARIA RILKE’S LETTERS

Ulrich Baer, University Professor, NYU

Paula Modersohn-Becker and Rainer Maria Rilke, two of the most important creative artists of early twentieth-century Europe, enjoyed a close friendship that left in its wake a remarkable series of letters. These deeply personal letters offer a poignant portrait of their unusually intense relationship, and of the two artists' views on art, life, love, and marriage during a period of artistic upheaval.

Monday, September 9, 6: 30 P.M.

REGISTER HERE

LITERATUR CAFÉ

Literatur Café features conversations on literature, translation, the art of writing, and literary reception. You can bring your own book or buy a copy of the featured book and have it signed.

"BEHOLDER"
A DRAMATIC READING

Join us for a dramatic reading of "Beholder" by award-winning playwright and prestigious New Dramatists alumnus Ken Prestininzi and a cast of professional actors. The play is based on passages from the notebooks and letters of Paula Modersohn-Becker and her friend, poet Rainer Maria Rilke. The script also takes inspiration from Rilke's poem about Modersohn-Becker, entitled "Requiem for a Friend."

The event will take place in the Klimt Gallery on the second floor of Neue Galerie New York and is followed by a small wine reception in Café Fledermaus.

Monday, August 12, 6:30 P.M.

REGISTER HERE 

THE DIARIES OF FRANZ KAFKA

Dating from 1909 to 1923, the handwritten diaries of Franz Kafka contain various kinds of writing: accounts of daily events, reflections, observations, literary sketches, drafts of letters, accounts of dreams, as well as finished stories. The Neue Galerie hosted a special evening with award-winning translator Ross Benjamin and New York Times bestselling author André Aciman, who discussed Benjamin’s groundbreaking new translation of “The Diaries of Franz Kafka,” complete and uncensored for the first time in print.This volume makes available for the first time in English a comprehensive reconstruction of the diary entries and provides substantial new content, including details, names, literary works, and passages of a sexual nature that were omitted from previous publications. By faithfully reproducing the diaries’ distinctive—and often surprisingly unpolished—writing in Kafka’s notebooks, translator Benjamin brings to light not only the author’s use of the diaries for literary experimentation and private self-expression, but also their value as a work of art in themselves.

Free Online Program

VIEW HERE