Nine spaces for art, culture and religion

The title of the exhibition BIS ZULETZT (UNTIL LAST) refers to something obviously important: What we believe in UNTIL LAST gives us strength; what we defend UNTIL LAST has a high value for us. Thus, fetishes and temptations, delusions of grandeur and masks, identification with animals and other motifs are presented to us as unexpectedly current and moving themes.

BIS ZULETZT and letzte Dinge (last things) are elementary themes of humanity, but they are also the linchpin of the Museum for Sepulchral Culture. Here, the new special exhibition takes up a change of perspective with regard to death: BIS ZULETZT refers to everything that accompanies us in life, i.e. what comes before death, just UNTIL LAST, whereas the last things are concerned with the transition, the after.

The exhibition consists of artworks from different times and cultures and include pre-Columbian, Asian and African sculptures and cult objects as well as examples of contemporary art from Josef Beuys to Rupprecht Geiger and Hermann Nitsch. By relating very different manifestations to one another, two levels of experience are created: on the one hand, it becomes clear which different answers the arts, cultures and religions have found different to central questions of humanity, and on the other hand, their common ground is initially revealed in different forms.

The collector and exhibition organizer Hartmut Kraft (Cologne) designed this exhibition for the Museum for Sepulchral Culture as an exciting dialogue between the objects and with the public.