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Duchamp Research Centre
About the Research Centre
The fascination that Duchamp’s complex oeuvre exerts on us remains unbroken right to the present day and inspired the Staatliches Museum Schwerin to establish the Duchamp Research Centre in 2009. Since then, artists, academics and scientists from throughout the world have been invited to examine and analyse the pieces in the Schwerin collection and discuss their research findings and results.
As a research facility within the museum in Schwerin, the centre is open to taking differing routes when examining and analysing the life and works of Marcel Duchamp as it pursues its mission of encouraging, supporting and accompanying innovative research. In this way, the Research Centre would like to inspire and maintain a lively discussion about Duchamp’s work along the interface between science, academia and the general public.
Management
After working as a curator at the “Staatsgalerie moderner Kunst” in Munich, Gerhard Graulich has been a member of the research and exhibition team of the “Staatliches Museum Schwerin” with responsibilities for art from the 19th to the 21st century. Since 2001 he has been Director of the Department of Painting and Associate Director of the “Staatliches Museum Schwerin”.
Since 1996, he has served as curator of the Marcel Duchamp collection. Together with Dr. Kornelia Röder, he has been developing the Marcel Duchamp Research Centre since 2009 and is one of the editors of the publication series Poiesis. His research is focused on investigation of the conceptual, ephemeral and process-oriented aspects of Marcel Duchamp’s concept of art. An upcoming project that he is planning will be devoted to the artistic investigation of Duchamp’s individual personality and his work. The following citation from Duchamp has become a motto for him: “When one is logical, one must doubt the idea of art history…Let us be satisfied with the beauty of the delusion, because that is all that there actually is!”
Dr. Gerhard Graulich
T +49 (0)385 588 47 211
Gerhard.Graulich(at)ssgk-mv.de
Dr. Kornelia Röder has been working as a member of the Schwerin research and exhibition team in the Graphic Cabinet since 1983. In 2006 she was awarded her doctorate from the University of Bremen with a dissertation on the theme “Topology and Functionality of the Network of Mail Art and its specific significance for Middle- and Eastern Europe in the years from 1960 to 1989.” Since 2009, Dr. Kornelia Röder has been responsible, along with Dr. Gerhard Graulich, for the Marcel Duchamp Research Centre in Schwerin. The primary focus of her research is art of the 20th century and contemporary art.
What fascinates her most with regard to the work of Marcel Duchamp is the extent to which its structure is based on networks. It offers endless possibilities for different perspectives from which it can be approached and observed, providing a wide variety of points of departure for further reflection. These characteristics stimulate in Duchamp’s work a particular vitality and an energy which is perpetually renewing itself. ”The rhizome can be perceived in itself either as a unity or as diversity. […]It is comprised not in terms of individual unities but rather as dimensions. […] Diversity as such cannot not vary its dimensions without changing and transforming itself.” Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari: Rhizom, Berlin 1977, p. 34.
Dr. Kornelia Röder
T +49 (0)385 588 47 214
Kornelia.Roeder@ssgk-mv.de
Dr. Deborah Bürgel
T +49 (0)385 588 47 219
DeborahVictria.Buergel@ssgk-mv.de
In addition to the exhibitions on the works of Marcel Duchamp, the Research Centre’s activities also include lectures series and scientific conferences. Moreover, publications are released on a regular basis in the context of the POIESIS publication series and the Lecture Notes, which highlight completely diverse facets of the Duchamp research work.
Each year, the Duchamp Research Stipend is awarded thanks to the generous support by the Friends of the Staatliches Museum Schwerin Association. The stipend gives young scientists and academics the opportunity to address new aspects of the life and works of Duchamp on which little research has been conducted to date. An especially important aspect in this regard is the networking with national and international scientists and artists, as well as with Duchamp collections and archives around the globe.