Current exhibitions

🠒 Bamberg University Museum of Islamic Art “The Bumiller Collection”

Poems of Silence. Jiří Kolář's Concretist Forms of Visual Poetry

Jiří Kolář (1914-2002) was a poet and visual artist whose works uniquely merge the boundaries between literature and art. Especially in the late 1950s and 1960s, he developed innovative techniques of visual poetry, such as analfabetograms and depth poems, which opened up new aesthetic forms of expression. Kolář's works are “wordless poems” in the sense of Stéphane Mallarmé, enabling a new form of communicatio beyond words. The exhibition in the Branch Library 4 presents selected works from his early period, including the cycle Signboard for Gersaint (1966) as well as other publications of Kolář's visual poetry.

15 Januar - 15 March 2026 at Branch Library 4. Free admission.

Building Site Nuremberg. 550 Years of Endres Tucher's Builder's Manual

The exhibition focuses on the unique builder's manual by Nuremberg's city master builder Endres Tucher (1462–1475), a largely overlooked source on urban construction, culture, and administration. It sheds light on key topics such as sustainability, infrastructure maintenance, and urban planning in the late Middle Ages. The exhibition was developed in cooperation between the Tucher Cultural Foundation and the University of Bamberg, incorporating insights from the conference “Trees, Fountains, Bridges. 550 Years of the Baumeisterbuch of Endres Tucher”.

October 15, 2025 to May 24, 2026, in the permanent exhibition “Renaissance, Baroque, and Enlightenment” at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum

Digital Exhibitions by the Institute for Catholic Theology

Past Exhibitions

Exhibitions at the University Library

2025

“Sustainable?! - The Handling of Clothing Then and Now” (provided by the Levi-Strauss-Museum, Buttenheim)
“Forget-Me-Not”: Biographies and fates of Jewish children from the former districts of Haßfurt, Hofheim, and Ebern during the Nazi period (created by students of the Friedrich-Rückert-Gymnasium in Ebern as part of a project seminar led by their teacher Daniel Heß and supervised by historian Cordula Kappner)
“What Unites? What Divides?”: Exhibitions on Christian denominations

2024

2023

“Technology #Female # Logical: Women and Technology in the Nuremberg Metropolitan Region”

2022

Special exhibition “The Eerily Fantastical World of Imagination of E.T.A. Hoffmann”: Illustrations by Aleksandra Kucharska-Cybuch
“The ABC of Visual Poetry - Poems by Vítězslav Nezval and Typo-Photomontages by Karel Teige”
“Gender-Sensitive Research at the University of Bamberg”
“The Schaleks - A Central European Family”

Exhibitions in Museums

Finsterau Open-Air Museum (joint exhibition of the Lower Bavarian Open-Air Museum Association in cooperation with the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography and the Otto Friedrich University of Bamberg): “On the Tracks of Hans Fehn in the Bavarian Forest” (07/25-11/25)
In cooperation with the Southeast Europe Society e.V.: Online exhibition for the 61st International Academic Week: “Wind of Change? Academic and Artistic Perspectives on Experiences of Change in Southeast Europe” (09/25)
International Museum Day “Experience Research Up Close!” (5.6 MB)- Insigts into projects in cooperation with th Diocesan Museum Bamberg (05/25)
Levi Strauss Museum: “Dude Ranches, or How Big-City Cowboys Made Fashion” (05/24 - 02/25)(1.7 MB)
Egyptian Museum Cairo: Wadi es-Sebua exhibition 2023
ETA Hoffmann House: Sonderausstellung “Phantaskop: Hoffmann Inspires!” (2022)
Historical Museum:
- 2021: “Small Finds, Big Stories - Archaeological Discoveries from Bamberg Cathedral”

Exhibitions of the Institute for Franconian Regional History

“Life in Transition: Bavaria 1918-1925. Between Democracy, Self-Determination, and Violence” (03/25-06/25)
“Glamour - Glow - Scandals? The Thurnau Party Society ‘Red Hand’” (special exhibition in the Thurnau pottery museum, 10/23-01/24)
Traveling exhibition “Dieweil das Land verheeret” on experiences of war in Franconia and Syria (05/23-09/23)
“In Our Midst: Satellite Concentration Camps in Upper Franconia" (conception and presentation of a poster exhibition for use in secondary schools 2023)
“We're Off! Consumer Society on the Leisure Carousel” (05/22-10/22)
“The History of the Thurnau Shoe Factory” - Pop-up exhibition on the structural changes in Northern Bavaria (04/22)

Further Exhibitions

Exhibition for the Advent and Christmas season 2025/26 by the Institute for European Ethnology: “Nativity Stories”