Exiting insights always Thursdays

The series of events KulTour of the museums and educational institutions in Chemnitz will again offer a wide range of cultural insights from next Thursday, October 19 to mid-February next year – each Thursday from 3.30 to 5 pm.

The “KulTour” is now taking place for the third time as a joint series, this time with the participation of the Industrial Museum, the State Museum of Archaeology Chemnitz, the Schlossberg Museum, the German Games Museum, the Museum of Natural History, the New Saxon Gallery and the Adult Education Centre Chemnitz, through which the registration is being processed. The series is addressed to all those who have time and leisure for culture and cultural education on Thursday afternoons. The programme focuses on exhibitions, exhibits, collections and special topics of the individual museums and institutions. The range of topics includes natural sciences, art, technology, history and archaeology. Guests are given an exciting look behind the scenes, which is otherwise not possible.

The scope of this year’s KulTour includes insights into the world of poisonous plants, interesting facts about Saxony’s first farmers, funeral cultures and communication through gestures. It looks at the artistic heritage of communism as well as Saxon art after 1945, vividly shows the GDR’s game production, the foundry industry in Chemnitz and captures the city of Chemnitz from the bird show but also through the window into the history of the earth. Join us on a journey through the city’s museums and educational institutions.

The events cost 4 Euro each. Registration is requested via the Volkshochschule Chemnitz (www.vhs-chemnitz.de, by telephone at 488-4343 or directly on site at the VHS im TIETZ).

<The events in detail:

<The dose makes the poison strong.
Do you know the names and the effects of the plants in your garden? Did you know that the blue monkshood is the deadliest plant in Europe? But only the dose makes the poison. Therefore, in this course you will embark on a journey through our local gardens and let the two faces of the plants fascinate you!
Thursday, 19.10.17, 15.30 – 17 pm, Museum of Natural History, Moritzstraße 20

Guidance: Red October. Communism as Fiction and Command
The exhibition on the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution explores the connection between the communist project and artists such as the Russian avant-garde or artists of different positions in the GDR. In addition, the handling of the artistic legacy after the end of the real existing socialism and the current relevance of comparable models of thought and future utopias are discussed. During a tour of the exhibition, these complex aspects will be explained and works by artists such as Carlfriedrich Claus, Willi Sitte, Olaf Nicolai or Via Lewandowsky will be presented.
Thursday, 19.10.17, 15.30 – 17 o’clock, Neue Sächsische Galerie, Moritzstraße 20

<Leadership: Saxony's first farmers
Immigrant farmers from the Middle East brought innovations in technology, way of life and economy to today's Saxony about 7,000 years ago. These innovations made projects such as nave construction and trench works possible in dimensions never seen before. At the same time they began to have an effect on the environment. This change, which can be recorded archaeologically in different landscape areas of Saxony, heralded an epoch of constant change for the people of the Neolithic Age, which is sometimes also documented by interpersonal violence.
</Thursday, 09.11.17, 15.30 – 17 pm, State Museum for Archaeology Chemnitz, Stefan-Heym-Platz 1

Game production in the GDR/SBZ
True to the motto “Re-playing is fun – The games of the SBZ & GDR”, many visitors will have a reunion with their own childhood memories. Discover games that were produced in the SBZ and GDR and how they differ from today’s games. Thursday, 16.11.17, 15.30 – 17 o’clock, Deutsches SPIELEmuseum e. V., Neefestrasse 78A

Guided tour: Saxon art after 1945 – A look behind the scenes
In the collection depot of the Neue Sächsische Galerie there are about 12,000 works of fine and applied art. During a guided tour through the depot, the participants can expect to see paintings, graphics, sculptures by Saxon artists, but also design objects from the period 1945 to 1990, such as the legendary helicopter radio by Clauss Dietel, various typewriter models or the many still famous “Mitropa tableware”.
Thursday, 14.12.17, 15.30 – 17 o’clock, Neue Sächsische Galerie, Moritzstraße 20

<yesterday, today, the day after tomorrow
Gestures accompany our speech and are an important part of everyday communication. With our hands we imitate objects and how we handle them. This special exhibition shows how gestures are explored, why gestures are an important store of knowledge for us in the use of objects and how gestures are becoming increasingly important as an interface for controlling technical devices. Participants will explore the exhibition in a dialogical tour, which invites them to try out the interactive exhibits and to reflect. Demonstrations of selected handicraft techniques, gesture-controlled robots and artistic installations round off the event.
Thursday, 11.01.18, 15:30 – 17 o’clock, Industriemuseum Chemnitz, Zwickauer Straße 119

Game production in the GDR/SBZ
True to the motto “Re-playing is fun – The games of the SBZ & GDR”, many visitors will have a reunion with their own childhood memories. Discover games that were produced in the SBZ and GDR and how they differ from today’s games . Thursday, 18.01.18, 15. 30 – 17 o’clock, Deutsches SPIELEmuseum e. V., Neefestrasse 78A

Guided tour: Special exhibition “Farewell and Memory
People have been burying their dead for 60,000 years. In Saxony, the oldest known burials date from around 7,000 BC. One of the largest Saxon cemeteries was found in Niederkaina near Bautzen. People were buried there from the late Neolithic Age until the migration of the peoples. The finds and findings from Niederkaina provide an impressive insight into the rituals surrounding death and dying, the ideas of the afterlife and the world of that time. The exhibition shows parallels to the burial cultures of the early advanced civilizations, ancient Greece and ancient Egypt.
Thursday, 25.01.18, 15.30 – 17 o’clock, State Museum for Archaeology Chemnitz, Stefan-Heym-Platz 1

All of a piece
“Casting material is the bread and butter of mechanical engineering”, wrote the Sächsisches Gewerbeblatt in 1839. On a tour of the permanent exhibition in the Industrial Museum, participants learn how foundry work became a pacemaker of Saxon industrialisation and how work in foundries has changed to this day. Demonstrations of metalworking machines round off the tour. In the practical part of the event, the participants themselves go through a casting process in miniature: from the production of a sand mould, to the filling of liquid tin, to the deburring of the casting.
Thursday, 01.02.18, 15.30 – 17 hrs, Industriemuseum Chemnitz, Zwickauer Straße 119

From the bird show
With the “technical marriage” of handy cameras and relatively safe aircraft, the demand for aerial photographs from a wide variety of motifs could be satisfied since the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, even in Saxon lands. These served the need to be able to view one’s own sphere of life from a bird’s eye view, for example for urban planning, landscape conservation, archaeological or military purposes. The collection of aerial photographs within the photo inventory at the Chemnitz Schlossberg Museum covers one hundred years of aerial photography from 1906 to the beginning of the 21st century and invites the viewer to look at the city “from above”. In addition to lectures and slideshows there is the possibility to take a closer look at original examples.
Thursday, 15.02.18, 15.30 – 17 o’clock, Schloßbergmuseum, Schloßberg 12