11 April – 9 November 2025

The new temporary exhibition in the upper women's gallery will be on display from April 11 to November 9, 2025 and is dedicated to the photographer Kurt Bardos and his family. Their eventful history, shaped by the Shoah, the communist dictatorship and several migrations, is told from the perspective of his sister Ilse. Martha Keil, curator of the exhibition and academic director of the museum, juxtaposes Kurt Bardos' artistic photographs with the family memories.

Kurt Bardos was born in Brno in 1914 into an old Austrian bourgeois Jewish family. He studied medicine, but his true vocation was photography. In December 1941, the entire family was deported to Theresienstadt; Kurt and his wife Zdenka were deported on to Auschwitz in 1944. There his trail is lost.

His photos, which were recovered in an almost miraculous way, show the creative way in which Bardos interpreted the stylistic devices of New Objectivity for himself and translated them into his precisely composed images. In addition to the photos and two video interviews with family members, some objects from the family estate will also be on display, which have surprisingly survived despite the breaks and changes of location.