Talking about beauty

The Martin von Wagner Museum of the University of Würzburg (MvWM) is collaborating with the Mozartfest Würzburg for the sixth time. In the anniversary year 2021, when the music festival celebrated its 100th anniversary, the Modern Department curated the prestigious exhibition "Imagine Mozart".

It was the beginning of a lasting collaboration. "We value the Mozartfest as a concept-orientated festival," says Museum Director Damian Dombrowski, explaining the ongoing partnership: "There are big names there too, but above all a thematic framework to which we can contribute each time."

In 2026, this framework is called: "Conjured Beauty: Idol Mozart" - a theme that addresses sound and visual art in equal measure. Albrecht Dürer confessed at the end of his life: "But what beauty is, I do not know." Nevertheless, he and countless other artists tried to find out exactly that. The question of beauty was and is one of the main driving forces behind all artistic endeavours.

What does beautiful mean here?

The MvWM's contribution to this year's Mozartfest is a series of talks entitled "What does beauty mean here?", which aims to get to the bottom of artistically designed beauty. To this end, works of art from the Picture Gallery, the Prints and Drawings Collection and the antiquities collection will be presented in a room of the Picture Gallery on four evenings. Each week they will come from a different epoch.

Director Dombrowski, who is also a professor at the Institute of Art History, will discuss the concept of beauty on which they are based and the changes that ideas of beauty in art have undergone in front of an audience with changing experts on the epoch from which the objects originate: Classicism, Renaissance/Baroque, the Middle Ages and Classical Antiquity.

"In the end, the audience will probably still not know what beauty is," Dombrowski points out. But they will certainly agree with Dürer that it is "inherent in many things". Although it has been thought about at all times, according to the art historian: "There is no one beauty, it is as diverse as art itself."

Comparison with the positions of the past

In an age in which talk of beauty is often broken down to beauty products or physical flawlessness, Dombrowski believes that a look at earlier eras can certainly do no harm. "The comparison with aesthetic positions of the past can also make you think - for example, about how beauty and freedom were once closely linked."

It is therefore definitely worth measuring (and perhaps readjusting) one's own perception of a work of art against the ideas of beauty that were associated with it at the time it was created - not least because the chronological arc of the series of talks spans almost two thousand years. Once again, the radius and quality of the university's own art collections will become visible.

Dates and topics

The talks take place in the Picture Gallery of the Martin von Wagner Museum (south wing of the Würzburg Residence, 2nd floor), from 6 to 7 pm. Admission is free. The programme at a glance:

• Tuesday, 2 June 2026: Ideal Beauty - Two Paintings and a Sculpture of Classicism. Talk with Professor Dr Mechtild Fend (Frankfurt), Professor of 18th and 19th Century Art History at Goethe University Frankfurt
   
• Tuesday, 9 June 2026: Discovered Beauty - A Painting, an Engraving and a Drawing from the Early Modern Period. Talk with Professor Dr Ulrich Pfisterer, Chair of General Art History with Special Reference to the Art of Italy, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
   
• Tuesday, 16 June 2026: Transfigured Beauty - A Madonna by Tilman Riemenschneider in conversation with Professor Dr Stefan Bürger, Professor of Medieval and Early Modern Art, Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg
   
• Tuesday, 23 June 2026: Classical beauty - Two Roman torsos based on Greek models in conversation with Professor Dr Jochen Griesbach-Scriba, Director of the antiquities collection of the Martin von Wagner Museum, Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg