Among the fruitful relationships between art and literature, the dialogue between poetry and sculpture plays a special role, but one that has received very little attention. The exhibition focuses on a tradition of experimental poetry and visual art since the 1960s, in which texts appear as three-dimensional (art) works.

Internationally, numerous artists have dealt directly or indirectly with olfactory aspects in their artist publications. This was done on the one hand through a conceptual examination and on the other hand by dealing with materials that smell.

For the second time, the Centre for Artists' Publications is hosting Artists as Independent Publishers - a cooperation of international universities, this time presenting current artists' books by students from Antwerp, Bremen, Halle, London, Vienna and Tokyo. As an interdisciplinary teaching event and exhibition cycle, Artists as Independent Publishers aims to actively take up, explore and help shape trends and possibilities in contemporary art.

The Italian artist Luca Vitone (*1964, lives in Milan) traces the manifold imprints that are deposited in spaces and determine both their appearance and our idea of them. In creating his conceptual portraits of different places, he incorporates emotional as well as cultural, social as well as historical, economic as well as political aspects. Since the 1980s, he has used film, painting, photography, installation, audio piece, or scent installation to pose questions about memory of and longing for home, about migration and the representation of spaces.

Commissioned by the Instituto Cervantes Bremen, the Spanish artist Mateo Maté created an art work especially for the Weserburg. The installation Landscape Europe 2020 is a gift donation to the museum.

The exhibitions of the Meisterschüler*innen, which have taken place at the Weserburg annually since 2011, give a multifaceted insight into the quality and variety of current art production in Bremen. A special highlight is the Karin Hollweg Prize-giving, linked to the presentation. With a total of 15,000 euros, it is one of the most important art sponsorship awards at German art schools. Half of the prize money is reserved for an institutional solo exhibition in Bremen. In 2020, 19 artists will take part in the presentation, which will exclusively show new, partly location-based works.

At the end of 2019, some 210 individual works by Norbert Schwontkowski from the Brigitte and Udo Seinsoth Collection were transferred  permanently to the Weserburg Museum of Modern Art. Thanks to this generous gesture, the museum is able to present a permanent artist‘s room dedicated to Norbert Schwontkowski, which supplements major works from the Seinsoth Collection with additional loans and is given a new emphasis once a year.

Elina Brotherus (*1972 in Helsinki) is internationally known for her self-portraits. And the fact is that she herself may be seen in almost all of her photographic and video works. These include series resembling diaries, photographed landscapes and situational mood-pictures. The exhibition at the Weserburg directs attention to more recent works and groups of works created since 2016. Here the Finnish artist appropriates various contemporary concepts of art and integrates them into her own unmistakeable aesthetic. She thereby follows Arthur Køpcke’s motto: ‘People ask: Why? I ask: Why not?’

The Way We Are 2.0 brings together on 2,500 square metres more than 180 works from more than 100 artists from various times and contexts in a wide-ranging investigation of content and form. Thematic spaces arise from such perspectives as artistic approaches to identity or traditions of landscape, a varied play with everyday life or aspects of urban life, the meaning of coincidence or of the body, minimalist tendencies or social resistance. The exhibition format The Way We Are is designed as a multi-part series, which is brought to life once a year in an extensive variation.