What's On at Europe's Museums

The intriguing world of Sophie Calle

Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin

Berlin is currently hosting the first major retrospective of work by artist Sophie Calle to be held in Germany. The show is a unique combination of older works from the 1980s and 1990s together with new pieces created especially for the Centre Pompidou. Born in Paris in 1953, Calle is now one of the world's most important contemporary artists. She first became known in Germany for her work The Detachment (1996), which looked at the disappearance of the political symbols of the former GDR regime. Calle famously approaches her topic like a detective -- shadowing and photograhing people unaware of her presence. She gives a voice to people otherwise silent, takes risks, breaks taboos and crosses frontiers. Her desire to explore other people's privacy is set off against investigations into her own life as an artist. A photographer, writer, detective, and even sociologist, she reinvents herself with each character she interprets.

Sophie Calle runs from Sept. 10 through Dec. 30, and is open daily 10:00 - 20:00, except Tuesday

Contemporary German art goes to St Petersburg

The Marble Palace, The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg

The State Russian Museum in St Petersburg is set to host an exhibition of contemporary German art as the Marble Palace serves as a temporary home for the Federal collection of German contemporary art's new acquisitions between 2000-2002. Actionbutton is an exhibition initiated by the state secretary for media and culture in cooperation with Germany's Nationalgalerie and the German Art and Exhibition Hall in Bonn. In total, the show encompasses 100 works including paintings, sculptures, installations, drawings, photography, and media art. It focuses on the artistic positions of the 1980s and 1990s as well as recent contemporary art, and features what might prove to be a controversial selection of works by German artists as well as foreign artists residing in Germany.

Actionbutton runs from September 17 till November 16, open daily except Tuesdays from 10:00 to 17:00, Mondays from 10:00 - 16:00

Venice gets surreal

Palazzo Grassi, Venice

The largest ever retrospective on Salvador Dali, his extraordinary life and his work, is currently taking place in the lagoon city. The retrospective marks the centenary of the birth of the versatile and often controversial Catalan master, possible the most famous and popular artist of the 20th century, and includes some 200 works of art from 130 museums and private collections from 15 countries. Divided into 20 thematic sections, the show features seminal work such as The Dream of Venus (1933); miniatures like Picture of Ana Maria Dali in swimsuit (1927); his first work View of Cadaqués from the Pani’s mount (1917) and his last one Swallowtail (1985). Along with Dali's many paintings, the exhibition explores his creative relationships with other artists, including Marcel Duchamp and Antoni Gaudi.

Dali runs from September 12 through January 9 2005, and is open daily from 10:00 to 19:00.

Reviving Romanesque art

Musée du Moyen Age (The Middle Age Museum), Thermes de Cluny, France

An outstanding set of works, famous among medieval art historians, is united for the first time ever at this exhibition in Paris. A number of large frescoes and wooden sculptures document the extraordinary flowering in the first half of the 12th century of Romanesque art in the Boi Valley in Spanish Catalonia, a period of creativity the show hopes to draw renewed attention to. The Boi Valley, a narrow cutting in the Spanish Pyrenees, is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but 50 years ago, nobody had any notion of the region's extraordinary art treasures. Discovered by a party of art historians in 1907, the works were photographed and studied but left where they were until a decade later, when they began to appear on the art market. The idea for this exhibition originated in 2001 when the last known sculpture from the Boi Valley still in private hands entered the collection of the Musée du Moyen Age.

The dream-like landscapes of Max Ernst

Barlach Haus, Hamburg

This new exhibition in the port city provides a broad overview of the famous German Dada-ist's landscape oeuvre. It encompasses an impressive selection of 70 works taken from public and private collections, including portraits, drawings, collages, graphics and sculptures, and focuses on the salient features of Max Ernst's whimsical landscape work -- such as forests, beaches, mountains and volcanoes.

Max Ernst, Traumlandschaften, runs through Sept. 19 - Dec. 12 and is open daily 11:00 - 17:00 except Monday