Resumen de Text and display: Julius Meier-Graefe, the 1906 White Centennial in Berlin, and the Canon of Modern Art
When Julius Meier-Graefe, author of the three-volume work Entwicklungsgeschichte der modernen Kunst (1904), was engaged by Hugo von Tschudi to participate in the Centennial of German Art 1775–1875 (1906) at Berlin's National Gallery, his concept of historicizing modern art blended with the exhibition making. Fourteen recently discovered postcards (published here for the first time) demonstrate the performative effect of Peter Behrens’ white exhibition architecture. The interaction of a book with the staging of an exhibition, it is argued, produced a transformative moment when an intellectual concept and a mode of display charted the narrative of a history of modern art that would become paradigmatic for most of the twentieth century.
