Anselm Kiefer: The Monument and the Ruin

Anselm Kiefer will be in conversation with architectural historian and Columbia professor Barry Bergdoll. Exploring the role of architecture and space in the artist’s work, the exchange will among other things address Kiefer’s permanent art installations in the Paris Panthéon, a building about which Bergdoll has written extensively including in the exhibition catalog Le Panthéon, symbole des révolutions (1989).

Anselm Kiefer’s monumental body of work represents a microcosm of collective memory, visually encapsulating a broad range of cultural, literary, and philosophical allusions—from the Old and New Testaments, Kabbalah mysticism, Norse mythology and Wagner’s Ring Cycle to the poetry of Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan.