16th september 2022 to 19th february 2023

What happens when you paint the same motif again and again over a period of more than forty years? Peter Dreher (1932–2020) is especially known for his paintings of glasses, which he titled Tag um Tag guter Tag (Day by Day, Good Day): he painted the same plain glass against the same background in his studio from 1972 until his death in 2020 almost 5,000 times. Dreher was deeply interested in painting itself, which he questioned and passed this question on to many young artists in his role as professor at the Freiburg branch of the State Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe in Freiburg. 

25 June 2022 to 11 June 2023

What does Freiburg, and what do we, have to do with German colonialism? We are still profiting economically, politically and culturally from the structures of oppression and exploitation that were created pre-1919. At that time people from all social classes believed in racial
ideology. A feeling of intellectual and cultural superiority over others, particularly non-Europeans, was widespread. And today? What prejudices and behavioural patterns have been passed down through the generations – either consciously or unconsciously? How are they expressed in our everyday lives? The exhibition reappraises Freiburg’s colonial interrelationships and encourages us to question our own actions.

25 March to 9 October 2022

We are all children, someone's child, throughout our lives. Some of us are parents ourselves. We grow up in different family groupings, as well as cultural and social contexts that shape us. We are part of it all, whether we choose to be so or not. Nevertheless, we are all fundamentally different, a fact that separates us and makes us foreign to one another – even as children and parents, lovers and friends. 

From 6 October 2022

Almost everyone can imagine what the times of the Romans and knights was like. But what happened in our region in the roughly 500 years in between? The new exhibition space in the Colombischlössle presents finds from this exciting era. Was it just a time of doom? 

For a long time, researchers assumed that society in the southern Upper Rhine region collapsed after the end of the Western Roman Empire. Archaeological finds such as precious jewelry, swords of the highest quality and imported goods from foreign lands tell a very different story. Within three centuries the life of the people changes in many ways: On the hills squares are fortified and developed, in the plains farms and villages are developing. Near them, over generations, small cemeteries grow into large burial grounds with several hundred graves.

The exhibition Decline and renewal offers the opportunity to take a look at the transition to a new age! 

28 October 2022 to 19 February 2023

New media change the way we see. The Freiburg painter and draftsman Rudolf Großmann (1882-1941) lived at a time when photography was beginning to establish itself as a mass medium. How did it influence his perception and how strongly is this expressed in his graphics? What interactions arose? The exhibition also takes a look at the present and allows Großmann's drawings to enter into a dialogue with current photographic forms of expression from the DZ BANK Art Foundation.