Supermodel Claudia Schiffer curates a 1990s fashion photography exhibition while Buckingham Palace’s art collection goes on display
Strike a pose
German supermodel Claudia Schifferwill take visitors to Düsseldorf’s Kunstpalast museum on a personal journey through the fashion industry in the forthcoming exhibition Fashion Photography From the 1990s.
For her first exhibit, Schiffer will bring together some 120 exhibits that draw upon different aspects, people and places that were pivotal to the fashion industry during that rollicking period. The show will include iconic fashion photography from legends Juergen Teller, Karl Lagerfeld, Herb Ritts, Corinne Day, Arthur Elgort and Ellen von Unwerth, some of whom Schiffer collaborated with during her 30- year career.
Fashion Photography From the 1990s will also showcase the richness and variety of fashion media through a variety of billboards, framed prints, magazine pages and Polaroids. Also featured in the exhibition will be moving images, music and never-before-seen memorabilia from the supermodel’s own private archive, allowing visitors to catch a glimpse behind the scenes of legendary fashion shows and afterparties of that decade.
“The 1980s was when I fell in love with fashion, but the 1990s was when I learnt what fashion really was. It was an intense and amazing time that had not been seen before, when shoots lasted for days and fashion was front-page news for weeks. Myself, and the other supermodels lived and breathed it and for the first time we realised together, we had the power to make change,” Schiffer said in a statement.
Fashion Photography From the 1990s will be on view from March 4 through June 13, 2021 at the Kunstpalast museum in Düsseldorf, where Schiffer was notably discovered by a modeling agent at a local nightclub in 1987.
“I am delighted that we have been able to get Claudia Schiffer to curate an exhibition about the fashion world of the 1990s. With this show, Germany’s most successful model — whose career began in Düsseldorf — will reflect in a very personal way an era that set standards to this day,” Felix Krämer, general director of the Kunstpalast, said.
Buckingham Palace’s art collection to go on display
While Buckingham Palace in London is undergoing a GBP369 million ($667 million) refurbishment, multiple paintings from the Royal Collection that usually hang in the Picture Gallery will be brought together in a gallery exhibition for the first time.
The two-year-long exhibition will feature 65 masterpieces by Italian, Dutch and Flemish old masters such as Titian, Rembrandt, Vermeer, van Dyck and Canaletto, most of which were acquired by George IV in the early 19th century. George IV notably commissioned British architect John Nash to transform Buckingham Palace into the principal royal residence in the 1820s. Part of the scheme was the creation of a picture gallery to show off the monarch’s art collection.
Masterpieces from Buckingham Palace will highlight the artists’ masterly use of paint, as seen in Rubens’ Self-Portrait, Frans Hals’ Portrait of a Man and Cristofano Allori’s Head of Holofernes.
Visitors of the year-long exhibition will also have the opportunity to discover additional masterpieces such as Pieter de Hooch’s Cardplayers in a Sunlit Room, Domenico Fetti’s Vincenzo Avogadro, Parmigianino’s Pallas Athene as well as Rembrandt’s The Shipbuilder and his Wife, which has long been said to be Queen Elizabeth II’s favorite painting, reported The Guardian.
Masterpieces from Buckingham Palace will also be accompanied by a display charting the evolution of the Palace’s Picture Gallery after the acquisition of Buckingham House by George III and Queen Charlotte in 1762.
Art enthusiasts can usually discover the paintings hung in the Picture Gallery during the annual summer opening of Buckingham Palace, which has been canceled this year in reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic. The exhibition will run from Dec 4 to January 2022 at the Queen’s Gallery in Buckingham Palace.
