Exhibitions

The desire to commemorate outstanding personalities, events and achievements with monuments is as old as culture itself. Since the 19th century, however, the need to honour personalities from politics, art and science with monuments has grown steadily.

While in earlier centuries it was mostly statesmen and monarchs who were honoured by the erection of monuments, poets, visual artists, musicians and scientists are now increasingly being honoured in this way.

In the beginning of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century however, the interest in honouring famous politicians, artists and scholars by commemorative monuments reached such a degree that this period actually can be characterised as an "epoch of passion for monuments and memorials".

A particularly large number of monuments have been erected in honour of Ludwig van Beethoven, each with a very different appearance. Shortly after his death, the desire arose to honour the great composer in an unusual way.

To this day, busts, full-length sculptures and large installations have been erected in his memory.

The exhibition shows a selection of depictions of the most important Beethoven memorials from around the world, revealing the variety of forms and approaches that visual artists have developed to commemorate Ludwig van Beethoven and his music.