PLAY YOUR DREAMS

A room where you may discover play – nothing less than this is offered by the new exhibition and trailmap in the Hamburger Kinderzimmer. For not just children but also artists have always enjoyed playing and besides this they would paint, model or sketch children immersed in play. Whether this was 300 years ago in the living room with the parents with nothing but a candle and the shadows of their movements, or 100 years ago in the children's room with a doll, a toy train and building blocks, or today wearing strange costumes, or just recently at the table with Mr. Knife and Mrs. Fork. Whether inside or outside, in motion or calmness, together or against one another: Playing always opens up a world of its own, in which toys are awakened to life, new things are created, roles are adopted and self-invented rules are tested. The creative processes involved in play are quite similar to those of the arts. Bearing this in mind, the artist Olafur Eliasson has designed for us »a playing space for the beginning of critical thinking«, intended to inspire adults and children to get together and play. »Man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays.« (Friedrich Schiller, 1759-1805, On the Aesthetic Education of Man, 1795).

The exhibition compiles paintings, sculptures, prints and videos of 300 years of history of art and play within the »Hamburger Kinderzimmer«, a children's space furnished with a smart modular Zometools game. At the listening and playing stations, you can actually experience past worlds of play by exploring a variety of games and testing some of the toys. And finally, playing trailmaps invite you to set out on a discovery tour through the collection to further artworks ranging from Lucas Cranach, to Philipp Otto Runge, to Gerhard Richter.

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