Kids!
Between Representation and Reality
28.11.2025 — 6.4.2026
Hardly any other topic reflects the values and norms of a society and its changes as clearly as the portrayal of children. At the same time, these depictions bear witness to the appreciation of children and the changing understanding of what it means to be a child over the centuries. The exhibition Kids! Between Representation and Reality is dedicated to the depiction of children in pictures from the 16th to the 21st century. Various chapters approach the subject from different perspectives and draw on photographs and sculptures as well as paintings.
The starting point for the images of children in the exhibition are depictions of the Virgin and Child, which still characterise social perceptions of mother-child relationships today. The portrayal of children has had various functions over the centuries. Created in circles of the high nobility around 1500, portraits of children were intended to underpin the continuity and claim to power. Against this backdrop, portraits often depicted young boys in armour as small adults. In this way, they were prepared for their future role as generals and rulers. A playful variant is the portrait historié, in which children were clothed in pseudo-historical dress and poses ancient gods, for example. Particularly in the 17th century Dutch and Spanish genre painters took up the motif of poor children, which survives to this day. As today, these images were intended to arouse compassion or even serve as a model of modesty.
The exhibition shows a wide range of images to show how depiction of children has changed over the centuries. Today, for instance, there are no longer any portraits of dead children. In the past, however, this was a way for the little one's memory to be kept alive. Nowadays, this memory is rather captured in lifelike portraits, for example in photographs that show children in happy life situations. The most serious change, which testifies to a different conception and definition of childhood, took place at the end of the 17th century and in the 18th century. Children should develop on their own – preferably in nature and away from the adult’s world.
As a result, the theme of childhood is still one of the most popular pictorial subjects in the visual arts today: Testing oneself, pushing boundaries, drawing, playing and togetherness are formative experiences for this most important of life phases.
The exhibition is sponsored by
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Opening hours
Ticket office open until 20.2.2025
Monday to friday 12:00 p.m. — 6:00 p.m.
Ticket info
Regular: 12 Euro
Reduced: 6 Euro
Tuesdays (except holidays): 6 Euro
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