New Perspectives on Literature
When we think of literature, the printed book usually comes first to mind. Narrative Matter invites visitors to broaden this perspective: using six selected exhibits – including Chinese oracle bones, a Japanese folding screen, and a Syrian graphic novel – the exhibition presents literature as a lived practice and an aesthetic experience.
Image gallery
Szene aus der Geschichte vom Prinzen Genji_Miyuki, Detail
Detail aus einem Comic von Reem Helou
Dagar Diaries
Chinesische Orakelknochen aus der Dschang-Dynastie
Visitors can explore the many different ways in which objects tell stories or inspire storytelling, how narrative materials change over time, and how literature is disseminated and imparted as a material and oral practice.
Diverse scholarly, curatorial, and conservation approaches continually open up new perspectives on the objects and their cultural contexts.
The exhibition presents objects related to literature, highlighting the genre’s diversity, materiality, and cultural integration.
Narrative Matter makes literature tangible beyond the covers of books – sensory, constantly evolving, and as topical as it is relevant.
The accompanying public programme opens up entirely new perspectives, which are explored in greater depth through specialist panel discussions, workshops, artistic interventions, and family-friendly offers. In this way, a lively dialogue emerges between objects, research, and audiences, with literature not only being read, but mutually experienced, questioned, and newly understood.
The project is jointly realised by the Institut für Museumsforschung (Institute for Museum Research), the Ethnologisches Museum (Ethnological Museum) / Museum für Asiatische Kunst (Museum of Asian Art), and the Cluster of Excellence Temporal Communities at Freie Universität Berlin.
- A special exhibition of the Forschungscampus Dahlem ‒ Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
