Exhibition | The Path to Art. The Hamburg auction house Hauswedell & Nolte

25.09.2024–28.09.2025 at ZADIK

The Hamburg auction house Hauswedell & Nolte closed its doors in 2015 and handed over its business records to ZADIK. They bear witness to the almost eighty-year history of the auction house, which sold books and autographs, modern art, old masters, and non-European art and cultural artefacts in 466 auctions. Countless objects have thus travelled from Hamburg to collectors, dealers, museums, and libraries around the world.

The exhibition sheds light on the activities, history, and development of one of the most important German auction houses of the second half of the twentieth century. Using selected examples, it traces the path of the objects sold, who collects what and why, which different actors can be involved in collecting, and what traces collecting has left behind in our archives.

These traces are of great importance for many research questions, including those of art market and provenance research. Documents such as those handed over to ZADIK by Hauswedell & Nolte are important sources in this respect – but they are rarely made public. The exhibition thus also aims to make them visible. 

Further information: https://zadik.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/en/communication/exhibitions/the-path-to-art-the-hamburg-auction-house-hauswedell-nolte