Artist talk with Michaela Melián
6. March 2026, 19:00 – 20:00
Overbeck-Gesellschaft

In a conversation between the artist Michaela Melián and Britta Dittmann, head of the archive of the Buddenbrook House, forms of artistic research and historically critical memory work in museums are discussed. The starting point is Melián’s engagement with Julia Mann in the exhibition Echo at the pavilion of the Overbeck Society and St. Petri.
For a long time, the international family history of the Mann family was told as a German success story centered on Thomas and Heinrich Mann. Julia Mann was thereby reduced to the role of mother and muse. Only through the efforts of feminist and postcolonial cultural studies since the 1960s and 1980s up to the present has this male-dominated historiography been questioned.
Gaps and omissions in particular pose challenges for historical writing. Melián’s art highlights these without attempting to close them, opening up an artistic space of resonance that stimulates untapped potentials and further reflection. By focusing on details and working with fragments, she develops something new. Through Julia Mann, Melián enables perspectives that also draw attention to unresolved social challenges of the present. In dialogue with Britta Dittmann, the conversation addresses the significance of art and the history of women within a broader social context.
The talk is being held in collaboration with the Buddenbrookhaus.