Start your Sunday morning with good company, great coffee, and delicious German cake at the GAI Café, held on the third Sunday of each month from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Germanic-American Institute. Savor homemade and specialty German cakes alongside strong, aromatic coffee, all available for purchase. Whether you come for the cake, presentation at 11 a.m., or simply to catch up with friends, we can’t wait to see you at the GAI Café!

Presentation at 11 a.m:  Tom Rassieur, Presenting Curator for the Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910-1945 Exhibition

Join Tom Rassieur for a discussion of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts' current exhibition, Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910–1945: Masterworks from the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Tom is Mia's presenting curator for this collaboration with one of Germany's foremost museums of modern art.

In the first half of the 20th century, Germany experienced the last years of the German Empire, World War I and the revolution that followed, the liberal Weimar Republic, the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazism, World War II, and the Holocaust. Modern art played an important role in the discourse of the period, and politics influenced the arts.

This exhibition features more than 70 paintings and sculptures from the collections of the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery), and is enhanced with significant additions from Minnesota collections. It traces the German experience in the visual arts over four decades.

Beginning with the Expressionist reaction and opposition to the conservative artistic regime of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the exhibition moves on to the New Objectivity movement, the modern style of the 1920s. Between the wars, German artists participated in international experiments with abstraction. Painters and sculptors critiqued social and political currents. Though most were silenced under the Nazis, some were able to persevere. The exhibition concludes with an epilogue that examines the ambiguous aftermath of World War II.

Tom will introduce the exhibition and highlight stories behind the art.