Candida Höfer

The title image of the exhibition is the famous Juno Room of the National Goethe Museum in Weimar. The eye-catching feature of this imposing interior is the Juno Ludovisi, a large plaster of Paris bust of Antonia Minor as the Roman goddess Juno. Candida Höfer shows this bright and empty room in a composition of extreme severity and clarity, almost tangibly evoking the spirit of the Enlightenment. One of the focal points of the exhibition are Candida Höfer’s photographs from Paris, Versailles and Fontainebleau. Her photographs of the Louvre, taken in 2005, count among the gems of museum photography, which is meanwhile a genre in its own right. Originally a royal palace, the Louvre museum has forever been a favourite motif of artists. Candida Höfer has concentrated on just a few of its galleries, including the Grande Galerie as the top-lit central axis of the building, the Salle des Caryatides and other rooms and galleries of painting and sculpture.