'Silent Pleasure: Master-Drawings from the Justus Schmidt Collection. A Critical Survey' at Stadtmuseum Nordico, Linz (08/10/2019)
'Das stille Vergnügen / Silent Pleasure: Master Drawings from the Justus Schmidt Collection. A Critical Survey‘ with artistic interventions by Maria Bussmann and Simon Wachsmuth takes place at the Stadtmuseum Nordico in Linz from 20 September 2019 until 5 January 2020. Simon Wachsmuth also conceived the exhibition design for the show, curated by Brigitte Reutner. Justus Schmidt, a Viennese art historian living in Linz (1903-1970), his collection comprising 668 graphics and 51 oil sketches by European artists from the 16th century to masterpieces of classical modernism by Peter Paul Rubens, Paul Gauguin, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele, was at that time also ‘the Nazi art expert‘. The exhibition fosters a critical examination of the collector and his time and rises the question to what extent a private collection brought into a museum can express an unencumbered identity if its author committed himself to the regime during the Nazi era.