Birgit Ulrike Münch | Under the Gloss. Dealing with the Dutch 'Golden Age’ in Contemporary European Museum Curatorship

Almost five years ago, the Amsterdam Museum (formerly the Historisch Museum Amsterdam) addressed the press and declared that in the future they would avoid the term “Golden Age” in favor of being “more polyphonic.” The characterization 'Golden Age' as an epochal term for the 17th century occupies an important place in Western historiography, which is strongly linked to national pride. Very positive associations with the term, such as scientific achievements, global economic networks, prosperity, and peace, obscure the fact that the 17th century was marked by extremely bloody warfare, natural disasters such as famines, and the dependency and exploitation of large parts of the population. The lecture presents current European exhibition projects and analyzes how contemporary curators position themselves on the topic and negotiate it innovatively.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Birgit Ulrike Münch is Professor of Art History and Vice Rector for International Affairs at the University of Bonn, Germany. She is also co-director of the Centre Ernst Robert Curtius, the Center for French Studies at Bonn University, as well as head of the scientific committee of the GNM, Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nuremberg, the largest museum of cultural history in the in German speaking countries. Münch´s research interests include early modern art, confessionalization, social art history, the juxtaposition of the arts, and medical humanities, e.g. the history of the body and illnesses, sexuality, and emotions. As PI within the only Humanities’ Cluster of Excellence in Bonn, Münch analyzes strong asymmetrical dependencies in 17th and 18th century Netherlands, Belgium, and France. Münch co-curated several exhibitions and is interested in innovative ways that artists and museums deal with their pasts and how monuments and memorials are recorded. Currently she is studying the hidden visual and textual archives in the early modern era, the history of prostitution, the portrait of illness as well as concepts of reconciliation. Together with church historians Volker Leppin (Yale) and Benedikt Brunner (Mainz) she is currently finishing a companion on early modern Nuremberg for Brill publishers. She received several prestigious fellowships in France, UK, and the US, e.g. a Senior Global Fellowship of the University of St Andrews, Scotland in 2022.

Her recent publications include The sick self. Some reflections on the self-making of the diseased body as "real portrait fiction", in: Wirklichkeit/Fiktion, Tübingen 2025 (in print), co-edited together with Markus Gabriel and Marion Gymnich; Long Covid - Unfortunately not ‘past’. Mapping (In)Visibility Perspectives from the Medical Humanities and Art History (together with Mariacarla Gadebusch), in: In the Realm of Corona Normativities II. The Permanence of the Exception, eds. W. Gephardt and J. Leko 2022; Aby Warburg in Bonn, co-edited with Hui Luan Tran (2022), Augenlust? Niederländische Stillleben (Exhibition Catalogue 2023), Transformer le monument funéraire. Möglichkeitsräume künstlerischer Überbietung des französischen Monuments im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert. Co-edited with Wiebke Windorf, Heidelberg: arthistoricum.net (Passages online 7), Paris 2021.

RELATED EVENT: Münch will give a lecture with the Stanford Humanities Center on May 28 at Levinthal Hall. Learn more.

VISITOR INFORMATION

Oshman Hall is located in the McMurtry Building on Stanford campus at 355 Roth Way. Visitor parking is free all day on weekends and after 4 pm on weekdays, except by the Oval. Alternatively, take the Caltrain to Palo Alto Transit Center and hop on the free Stanford Marguerite Shuttle. If you need a disability-related accommodation or wheelchair access information, please contact Julianne Garcia at juggarci [at] stanford.edu (juggarci[at]stanford[dot]edu). Seating for this event is limited, and admission will be granted on a first-come, first-served basis. Please arrive to the venue early to secure your seat. This event is free and open to Stanford affiliates & the general public.

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