Current Events
Exhibition “Nach der Art des Landes zu leben”: Carsten Niebuhr and the Art of Travelling to the OrientImFlurGalerie | Göttinger Verlag der Kunst, Geiststr. 11, 37073 Göttingen
29 May 2026 to 17 July 2026
It all began in Göttingen. In the early 1750s, a then newly appointed professor at Göttingen, the renowned orientalist Johann David Michaelis, conceived the idea of sending a scientific expedition to Arabia Felix, present-day Yemen, in order to explore the biblical origins of Christianity. With the Hanoverian count Johann Hartwig Ernst von Bernstorff as a pivotal mediator, Michaelis’ project was eventually funded by King Frederik V of Denmark. In 1761, the six members who made up the Royal Danish Expedition began their journey to the Orient. Seven years later, in 1767, only one explorer returned. Carsten Niebuhr, a former Göttingen student, who had joined the expedition as a mathematician and cartographer, became a celebrity overnight. By 1778 he had published his account of the expedition in three richly illustrated volumes: his Beschreibung von Arabia (1772) and the two first volumes of his Reisebeschreibung nach Arabien (1774–1778), to which a third volume was added posthumously in 1837.
This exhibition explores the visual aspects of the Carsten Niebuhr’s journey to the Orient. Tracing Niebuhr’s journey from Göttingen to the Orient and back, the exhibition seeks to explain the purpose of the expedition, what it initially was and how it changed, and what made it so extraordinary in its own time. Reading Niebuhr’s visual language, it sheds new light on Niebuhr’s Orient: what it did to change Europe’s perception of the East and of itself, and how it still speaks to us today.
Niebuhr wanted to tell two stories simultaneously. On the one hand, he told his story as a story of life and death. The art of oriental travel was, for Niebuhr, an art of survival. On the other hand, he told his story as a story about cultural encounters and dialogue, about other people, their mores and their way of life. For Niebuhr, the art of oriental travel was an art of seeing things their way. Niebuhr’s perspective on the art of oriental travel is embodied in the copperplate engravings and etchings that illustrated his works. Putting on display a selection of 30 enlarged reproductions, the exhibition tells Niebuhr’s story anew by using modern digital techniques to play with shapes and sizes, colours and light, thereby providing a new perspective on the art of oriental travel.
Workshop: Liberty as Independence: European Perspectives on the Work of Quentin Skinner
20-21 April 2026, Fiesole (Italy)
Workshop: Slavery/Abolitionism Project (1)
28-29 May 2026, Eden Hotel, Göttingen
Workshop: Sharing Sovereignty in the Federal Union: Conceptions and Contestations (Federal Union Project, 2. Workshop)
15-16 June 2026, Fiesole (Italy)
Workshop: Slavery/Abolitionism Project (2)
05-06 October 2026, Fiesole (Italy)
Past Events
Workshop: Peace, Prosperity and Jealousy of Trade: The State of Political Economy in Early Modern Europe27 February 2026, Madrid, with Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Exhibition »Christmas with Rembrandt«
Göttinger Verlag der Kunst, Geiststr. 11, 37073 Göttingen
13. November 2025 till 12. February 2026
Projekt und Workshop: »The Federal Union: Futures and Pasts of a Shared European Heritage 1515-2025«
16 - 17 September 2024
Europe is in crisis. Perhaps the European Union has even entered, as many analysts like to put it, an era of ‘polycrisis’. One of our most fundamental European debates concerns the future direction of the Union, especially in terms of its democracy, its civic cultures and its geopolitics. What should the make-up of the Union be in terms of democratic institutions? What should be its foundation in terms of citizenship and civic cultures? How should citizens and policy makers address the division and workings of sovereign powers in the Union? How should the Union act in the world of geopolitics? In short, what kind Federal Union should Europe be?
The project is co-organised with the political advisor, essayist and historian Joshua Livestro, whose study A More Perfect Union: Federal Union in Political Thought and Practice, 1500-1951 has just been published as paperback by Amsterdam University Press.
See programme here
International Workshop: »Geneva, the Swiss Confederation, and the North: Eighteenth-Century Exchanges«
organised by Jonas Gerlings, Brian Kjær Olesen, and Martin van Gelderen
8 May 2024
More than a century ago in 1910 Louis Bobé noted that “Throughout the second half of the eighteenth century, there was a rich intellectual interaction between Copenhagen and Geneva.” While Bobé restricts his assertion to Copenhagen recent studies have unearthed wider connections between Geneva and the Nordic literary public (Denmark-Norway and Sweden-Finland). Not only did Nordic writers appropriate the ideas of the Republic of Geneva, Swiss writers also displayed an influential interest in the Nordic states. The aim of this workshop is to explore these connections further through the presentation of a series of papers.
See programme here