Photos

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

From 3 July to 5 September 2025, the Centre for Advanced Study presents the exhibition “case study #2: Re:Set: From Slide to Database – Media Change in Art History” – an exhibition by students of the Institute of Art History.

The exhibition is dedicated to the memory of Stefan Voß († 2025), whose knowledge and commitment had a significant influence on the project.

The opening on 3 July 2025 featured a talk by Prof. Dr. Ursula Frohne with artist Dr. Philipp Goldbach, whose installation featuring historical glass slides is on display in the exhibition, as well as with Prof. Dr. Thomas Hensel (Art and Design Theory, Hochschule Pforzheim).

Location:

Library foyer, Philosophikum
University of Münster
Domplatz 23
48143 Münster

Opening hours:

Monday–Friday 9 am to 7 pm (during lecture period until 18 July 2025) | 10 am to 6 pm (during lecture-free period from 21 July 2025)

Admission: free

Concept: Alva Andernacht, Kira Breitbach, Ursula Frohne, Beate Glosemeyer, Junyoung Jeong, Joel Keller, Sookyung Kim, Marie-Féline Malavasi, Garance Martin, Mareike Nienhaus, Stella Rennwanz, Freya Stindt, Ruobing Yin

How has the way we view art changed since images became freely available and accessible at any time via digital image databases? And what remains of the analogue slide projection as a form of communication when algorithmically sorted archives dominate the selection and presentation of works?

The exhibition „Re:Set: Vom Dia zur Datenbank“ (“Re:Set: From Slide to Database”) takes the media transformation in art history as its starting point to illuminate the historical, aesthetic and epistemological dimensions of art-historical image practices. It was developed by students as part of the seminar “Media of Art History” – in examination of discarded image carriers and technical devices that preserve traces of art historical teaching from past decades in the institute's media library.

The seminar focused on the history and present of art-historical reproduction media – from Heinrich Wölfflin's parallel projections and Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne Atlas to digital image databases and AI-generated image worlds. The seminar examined not only the functional aspects of technical media – such as glass slides, 35mm slides, photo prints, projectors and scanners – but also their structuring power and their influence on methods: How do media shape our vision? What role do they play in the formation of canons? And what knowledge resources do the visual practices of art history contain or make accessible?

A highlight of the exhibition is an installation by artist Philipp Goldbach, who transforms historical glass slides from the institute – once teaching aids, now media-archaeological objects – into a site-specific work. His artistic intervention refers both to the material culture of academic knowledge transfer and to the traces of analogue image practice in an increasingly digitalised present.

The exhibition is complemented by poster presentations by students that explore central questions in greater depth:

• What stylistic and image-critical demands were inherent in slide projections – and how are digital image databases changing the methods of the discipline?
• Which images found their way into the ‘musée imaginaire’ of art history teaching – and why?
• How is contemporary art responding to the disappearance of analogue image carriers?
• And how reliable is image information in the age of deep fakes and AI?

On display are objects from the media library and rare book collection of the Institute of Art History at the University of Münster: projection slides, teaching photographs, projectors – evidence of a visual practice in transition. “Re:Set” is an invitation to reflect on teaching image collections as epistemic media – and on how reproduction technologies have shaped, expanded and transformed art-historical knowledge.

The exhibition is the second in the ‘case study’ series, which takes up the format of the display case as a classic venue for presenting ephemera. In an experimental, laboratory-like form, possibilities for creating access in an art-historical context are explored within the framework of research-based teaching.