Couven Museum

100 Artists – 100 Tiles 2010
2010-09-25 - 2010-10-24
As part of the Aachen Art Route 2010, 100 tiles designed by 100 contemporary artists will be temporarily added to the Couven Museum’s permanent exhibition of mostly Dutch tiles from the 17th and 18th centuries from the Ludwig Foundation.
This project, already realised in 2007 in the Ludwig Forum, Aachen and in 2009 in the Zinkhütter Hof, Stolberg, and now reaching its conclusion in the Couven Museum, grew from the initiative of the artist Gabriele Prill. The starting point for all the artistic designs is a white, standard tile. The tiles are worked on with a range of different materials like porcelain paint, copper foil, steel, oils and acrylics, gold leaf, glue, wood, glass, burlap, spray paint or silicon.
The results are as varied as the individual artists’ approaches. Artist from the region and far beyond, and even some international artists are taking part in the action, which culminates in a social project. On 24 October, the 100 tiles will be auctioned, the proceeds going to the charity BUNTER KREIS in der Region Aachen e.V.
Opens: 24 September 2010, 7 pm
www.100kuenstler-100kacheln.de

500 Golden Years
2010-10-09 - 2010-11-28
This year, Aachen’s Guild of Goldsmiths is celebrating its 500th anniversary. The Couven Museum is taking part in the celebrations. It is one of three venues, and will be exhibiting secular works from gold and silver workshops in Aachen. The Guild of Goldsmiths’ exhibition will be on show in the Sparkasse Aachen, while examples of sacred gold and silver work will be displayed in Aachen’s Cathedral Treasury.
Exhibits range from the works of well-known older Aachen goldsmiths and family businesses (von Rodt, von Orsbach, Joh. Theod. Cremer, Hub. Moeren) and those of workshops from the period of historicism to the works of master goldsmiths of the recent past and the present day. The works on show include centrepieces, cutlery, ornamental trophies, chains of office, riflemen’s silver and individual pieces of jewellery.
Preview: 8 October 2010, 5 -6 pm

How the West was Sobered Up
2010-12-04 - 2011-03-20
Coffee arrived in Europe at just about the same time as tea, in the 17th century. Coffee had previously only been popular among the Arabs in Africa; tea originated in Asia. Initially, the new imports to Europe were enjoyed in aristocratic circles before they gradually established themselves in the middle classes. They replaced the previously typical consumption of alcoholic beverages like wine, beer and spirits and were hailed as “the great soberers”. Their popularity reflected the spirit of the Enlightenment that influenced general thinking in the 18th century.
Enjoyment of the costly exotic luxuries coffee and tea called for new equipment for their preparation and presentation. In addition to coffee roasters and coffee grinders, it was porcelain crockery that the elite required to maintain credibility of their social standing. The exhibition shows the cultural change heralded in by the spread of the new hot beverages in Europe and presents the many facets of the new culture of coffee and tea.
Opens: 3 December 2010, 7 pm
Flyer Coffee Tea

La Beauté – The History of Cosmetics
2011-05-14 - 2011-09-04
Ideals of beauty and the means to achieve them have changed from age to age. Cosmetics have always been used to maintain and beautify the human face. Throughout the ages, beneficial substances, layers of highlight and select perfumes have served to groom our appearance and surround us with an aura of irresistibility. Yet cosmetics were a luxury that for centuries only the upper classes could afford. This is evident in the noble containers and finely worked utensils of precious materials from the various historical periods.

Portraits provide us with a running report on how ideals of beauty and fashion have changed over the centuries, but also on popular make-up techniques through the years. And these were more often than not anything but good for the health. For example, from as early as antiquity the noble pallor of a white face was achieved by means of toxic white lead. Cosmetic guides only began recommending healthier recipes from the Age of Enlightenment on. For the “home-made” cosmetics of the hairdressers and perfumers, powder vendors and fancy goods traders, the expensive raw materials were available from the pharmacy. With industrialisation in the 19th and 20th centuries, care and beauty products became affordable for wider sectors of society. But what remains to this day is the sense of luxury created by the exquisite decoration of powder boxes, perfume flasks, pots of cream and, last but not least, lipstick tubes.

This exhibition takes a tour through the history of seductive cosmetics from antiquity to the present day. In cooperation with Babor Cosmetics, an internationally operating Aachen family business, a selection of objects and paintings relating to the culture of cosmetics will be on show. Visitors will also get an insight in the fast-moving yet highly characteristic trends of fashionable beauty and cosmetics from the 1950s to the present day.
Flyer La Beauté

The Secret Life of Ornaments
2011-09-24 - 2011-10-30
A variety of small animals will populate the Couven Museum from 24 September to 30 October. The filigree creatures are shaped from wire and paper. There are imaginary beetles and other artistically formed animals, all of them very aesthetic and pleasing to the eye. They are not here by accident. On closer inspection they reveal themselves to be mutations of the omnipresent Rococo ornamentations in the furniture. Odine Lang goes on the hunt for these multifaceted ornamentations, captures them with her camera and frees them from their original contexts. Because the objects always reflect organic forms, the ornamentations come alive in a way that gives a subtle touch of eeriness to the familiar Rococo ambience. The Aachen-based artist, originally from Göttingen, transforms historical ornamentations into lifelike creatures that have a surreal and bemusing effect in these surroundings.

The exhibition takes place as part of the 14th Aachen Art Route on 24 and 25 September 2011.
The catalogue costs 4,- €

The Infant Jesus in a Glass Shrine – the magic of Baroque convent handicrafts
2011-11-19 - 2012-02-12
With the Counter-Reformation, pomp and splendour started entering the liturgy, the pilgrimage business was revitalised and the cult of saints and relics received a boost. Adoration of the infant Jesus, an established practice in Southern Germany and the Alpine countries since medieval times, although until the Reformation mostly restricted to the confines of convents, now became public. Some of the most famous figures of the infant Jesus began turning up as copies not only in churches but also in urban and rural circles, usually set up and adored as “The Christ Child” at Christmas.
From the mid-16th century, the Christmas Crib also experienced an enormous upswing in popularity, not least thanks to the efforts of the Jesuits. In Catholic regions, religious customs governed daily life. The exhibition presents numerous objects that reconstruct and illustrate the various facets of Baroque piety. pilgrimage baby Jesus, rustic infants in swaddling, cradles and glass boxes, relic images, votive and devotional pictures as well as cribs that relate to two significant crib landscapes: Upper Swabia and Naples.
The exhibition also covers the topic of the “spiritual medicine cabinet” with Baroque remedies like phylacteries, consecrated objects for protection, rosaries, prayer book pictures, fabric relics and amulets. These exhibits illustrate how people protected themselves against maladies of the body and soul.
The aim of staging this exhibition from the collection of Monika Lennartz in the Couven Museum’s late Baroque setting of middle class home culture is to bring Baroque piety back to life, especially in terms of the customs associated with Christmastime, and to shed new light on familiar and forgotten practices.
An exhibition catalogue will be available.

Doll Dreams
2012-05-12 - 2012-09-02
A doll is a reproduction of a human figure. Dolls count as one of the oldest and most beloved children’s toys, but they are also popular as collectables and decorative objects. Dolls were being fashioned as long ago as in ancient Egypt, ancient Greece and Rome. We are not certain whether such dolls were meant as toys or whether they served cult purposes. But we do know that all these cultures had children who played with dolls made of various materials.

With industrialisation, which had been immediately preceded by the discovery of childhood in the Romantic and Biedermeier periods, in the 19th century the art of doll-making reached a peak. All kinds of materials were used like porcelain, rubber, wax, tin, composites, and celluloid. And the doll became a generally popular object. The exhibition shows a wide range of emotionally appealing examples from the world of dolls: German and French porcelain and celluloid dolls, Italian felt dolls, Käthe Kruse dolls from the end of the 19th century to the mid-20th century.

Flyer Doll Dreams

Wolfgang Nestler: Inner Life
2012-09-22 - 2012-10-21
Wolfgang Nestler’s art project in Aachen’s Couven Museum starts out with a photographic exploration. The artist’s interest is focussed on the old Aachen Townhouse and its historical “residents”. Nestler uses his camera to capture faces, heads and figures. He records objects and spatial compositions that have a special significance. Liberated photographically from their context by the artist and transferred into close-up, faces shapes and objects become amenable to different perception. Each individual photograph opens an associative space for the observer in which to relate personally with the image. Local explorations by pupils of the Höfener Heckenland School is the second component of the project. The pupils also follow the historical tracks of life in Haus Monheim, and enter into a dialogue with the artist and his works. This generates new fields of action that bring today’s lifestyle into play.
Wolfgang Nestler, twice a participant in documenta and, until 2008, Professor at the Saar College of Fine Arts, has often confronted the general public with art projects that feature buildings as places where people live. His art projects focus on the processual aspect. They involve and include other players. They create relations between places, times and worlds of experience.
The exhibition in the Couven Museum is presented in the context of the Aachen Art Route 2012.

Flyer Nestler

New loans from the Peter and Irene Ludwig Foundation
2013-04-09 - 2013-06-30
In the category applied arts, several loans from the Ludwig Collection that were still in the private collection of Irene Ludwig when she died in 2010 have recently made their way to the Suermondt-Ludwig Museum. These items are currently on show to the general public in a temporary exhibition at the Couven Museum. The exhibits include silver plates, silver candlesticks, leather boxes, porcelain, copper pots and pans and parts of a pewter service as well as glass caskets that were used in 19th-century Aachen as spa souvenirs. The items provide an insight into the lesser-known aspects of Peter and Irene Ludwig’s broad passion as collectors.

Klangwelten in Couven-Räumen
2013-09-12 19:00 - 22:00 (Europe/Berlin)
Programm
Begrüßung / Greeting

Dr. Dagmar Preising, Leiterin des Couven-Museums

Grußworte / Adresses of welcome

Dr. Margrethe Schmeer, Bürgermeisterin in Aachen
Isabelle Weykmans, Ministerin der Deutschsprachigen Gemeinschaft Belgiens
drs. A.M.G. (Twan) Beurskens, Gedeputeerdevoor Economie en Grondbedrijf in deProvincie Limburg

Festvortrag / Lecture

Dr. Lutz-Henning Meyer, Denkmalpfleger des Landschaftsverbands Rheinland, i.R.

Einführung in die Ausstellung „Musikinstrumente und musikalische Kultur zwischen Barock und Biedermeier“ im Couven-Museum / Introduction to the exhibition „Musical Instruments and Culture from Baroque to Biedermeier“ at the Couven-Museum

Gisela Schäffer, M.A., Kuratorin, Couven-Museum

Musik / Music

Das Chapelle Quartett Aachen spielt Streichquartett f-moll / Stringquartett f-minor, Op. 20 Nr. 5 von / by Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

Im Anschluss: Rundgang durch die Ausstellung im Couven-Museum/ Afterwards: a tour through the exhibition at the Couven-Museum

Soundscapes in Couven Rooms
2013-09-13 10:00 - 2014-01-12 17:00
To commemorate the 250th anniversary of the death of the Baroque architect Johann Joseph Couven on 12 September 2013, the Couven Museum is initiating a transnational project devoted to the outstanding significance of Aachen’s famous master builder for the architectural landscape of the Rhine-Meuse region.
Johann Joseph Couven’s (1701-1763) early professional years were influenced by his collaboration with the Westphalian court architect Johann Conrad Schlaun. Through his experiences with the French Régence style and the southern German late Baroque style, Couven developed a specific architectural language typical for his region. This brought him prestigious commissions for representative buildings and interior decors from the nobility, the church and the upper middle classes.
Under the title “Soundscapes in Couven Rooms“, for the first time the most important surviving architectural monuments built by Johann Joseph Couven will be networked across national borders through a series of events with a musical focus. Music offers a particularly suitable medium through which to experience the various architectural functions of the buildings, which range from sacred structures and noble residences to middle class family houses, in a typical dimension of their purpose. The events will run from 12 September 2013 to 12 January 2014, offering concerts, guided tours and a wide range of special-interest events in 18 Couven monuments in Germany and across the borders.
The project will be accompanied by an exhibition in Aachen’s Couven Museum entitled “Soundscapes in Couven Rooms – Musical Instruments and Musical Culture between Baroque and Classicism”. The exhibition will provide insights into musical tradition in public and private contexts between 1700 and 1815. The surviving original construction drawings and architectural drafts of the “musically networked” Couven monuments will also be on show, offering an overview of the works of Aachen’s illustrious architect. In addition, the Couven Museum will also be hosting a conference with a tighter focus on the culturally and historically interesting border zone between the history of architecture and the history of music with the aim of exploring new horizons interpretation and perception of Couven architecture.
For detailed information on the programme and on partners and participants, visit www.couven-klangwelten2013.de

Von der Viola d'Amore bis zur Vogelorgel
2013-10-05 15:00 - 17:00, 2013-11-02 15:00 - 17:00

Familiensonntag: "Schlüpf durch das Fenster der Zeit" - Johann Joseph Couven und die Musik
2013-10-06 10:00 - 18:00
Programm
11.15 Uhr: Muscheln mit Schnörkel und Bohne
Der Architekt Johann Joseph Couven
12.30 Uhr: Gambe streichen, Trommel schlagen, Laute zupfen
Musik der Couven-Zeit
14.00 Uhr: Wo sind denn hier die Musikanten?
Ein Suchspiel für scharfe Augen
15.30 Uhr: Das spielt heute keiner mehr: Posthorn und Vogelorgel
Offene Werkstatt 11-17.30 Uhr:
Bastle eine Tellerrassel, die aussieht wie ein Huhn, eine Qualle oder wie Pippi Langstrumpf!

Hausführung
2013-10-06 11:15 - 13:00, 2013-10-13 11:15 - 13:00, 2013-10-20 11:15 - 13:00, 2013-10-27 11:15 - 13:00
Öffentliche Hausführung durchs Couven-Museum mit Georg Tilger

Kleine Musikgeschichte der Couven-Zeit
2013-10-09 15:00 - 16:30, 2013-10-30 15:00 - 16:30
Erfahren Sie mehr über Stadtpfeiferei und Kirchenmusik, reisende Virtuosen und dilettierende Bürger in Zeit von J.J. Couven. Beschließen Sie den Museumsbesuch mit einer köstlichen Kuchen-Spezialität und einem Heißgetränk gratis im Café zum Mohren.
Kosten: 7,50 Euro, Anmeldung erforderlich unter +49(0)241-47980-20 oder renate.szatkowski@mail.aachen.de

Johann-Joseph Couven: Entwürfe für die Baukunst zwischen Rhein und Maas
2013-10-12 15:00 - 17:00

Konzert: Barafostus' Dream
2013-10-13 12:00 - 14:00
Ein Konzert in historischen Kostümen mit Ensembles der Städtischen Musikschule (Blockflöten – Querflöten – Violinen – Harfe – Violoncello – Cembalo). In Kooperation mit der Musikschule Aachen und der Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln, Standort Aachen.
Leitung: Hanna Gründer und Melitta Wolf.

Ein Streifzug durch die Musikinstrumente des Barock
2013-10-15 18:30 - 20:30
Im Rahmen der Ausstellung „Klangwelten in Couven-Räumen. Musikinstrumente und musikalische Kultur zwischen Barock und Biedermeier“, die noch bis zum 12. Januar im Couven-Museum am Hühnermarkt zu sehen ist, findet am Dienstag, 15. Oktober, um 18.30 Uhr ein Vortrag von Professor Dr. Eszter Fontana aus Leipzig statt.
Unter dem Titel „Musikinstrumente des Barock – Ein Streifzug“ stellt Professorin Fontana einige typische Musikinstrumente des Barocks vor. Interessante und wahre Geschichten über Erfindungen und Neukonstruktionen von Musikinstrumenten treten dabei in den Fokus. Sonderanfertigungen und besonders schön gestaltete Musikinstrumente werden den interessierten Zuhörern vorgeführt. Der Vortrag wird durch Klangbeispiele begleitet.
Kosten: 5 Euro, ermäßigt 3 Euro (Museumseintritt)

Couven-Museum geschlossen
2013-10-18 00:00 - 23:59
Ganztägig – wegen des Betriebsausflugs der Stadt Aachen am 18. Oktober.

In Stadt und Land, an Höfen und in Bürgerhäusern: Das Musizieren im Barock
2013-10-19 15:00 - 17:00

Lustige Instrumentenmacher-Werkstatt
2013-10-22 14:00 - 17:00
22. und 23. Oktober, jeweils von 14 bis 17 Uhr
Ob Trommel oder Rassel, Flöte oder Zupfbogen – in der kleinen Werkstatt des Couven Museums bauen wir Musikinstrumente mit Holz, Kleister, Nägeln, Bohrer und Säge. Das bringt doppelten Spaß: beim Basteln und beim ersten Ton.
Bitte etwas zu Trinken und einen kleinen Snack mitbringen.
Leitung: Petra Hellwig/ Kathrin Philipp-Jeiter
Kosten (Herbst): 20 €/ ermäßigt 10 €
Anmeldung unter 0241/47980-20 oder per E-Mail an renate.szatkowski@mail.aachen.de

Die Heilige mit der Orgel, der Hirte mit der Schalmei
2013-10-26 15:00 - 17:00

La Cuisine du Poète
2013-10-30 19:00 - 23:00
Zwischen den Gängen eines exquisiten Vier-Gänge-Menüs wird eine duetsch-französische LEsung aus einer Asuwahl von Werken des berühmten “schreibenden Paares” Simone de Beuavoir und Jean-Pual Sartre erfolgen.
Ort: Festsaal des Couven-Museums
Preis: 97 Euro inklusive 4-Gänge-Menü und Getränke sowie Programm
Reservierung: 0241/432-4920/-4921; E-Mail: irit.tirtey@mail.aachen.de
Veranstalter: Kulturbetrieb der Stadt Aachen in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Deutsch-Französischen Kulturinstitut Aachen

La Cuisine du Poète
2013-10-31 19:00 - 23:00
Zwischen den Gängen eines exquisiten Vier-Gänge-Menüs wird eine duetsch-französische LEsung aus einer Asuwahl von Werken des berühmten “schreibenden Paares” Simone de Beauvoir und Jean-Paul Sartre erfolgen.
Ort: Festsaal des Couven-Museums
Preis: 97 Euro inklusive 4-Gänge-Menü und Getränke sowie Programm
Reservierung: 0241/432-4920/-4921; E-Mail: irit.tirtey@mail.aachen.de
Veranstalter: Kulturbetrieb der Stadt Aachen in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Deutsch-Französischen Kulturinstitut Aachen

Hausführung
2013-11-03 11:15 - 13:00
