Lecture by Kathrin Meyer about »Situated Relations: Eco-Sensible Curating from a Human-Among-Others Perspective«
On Monday, 15 June 2026, Kathrin Meyer, Director of Museum Sinclair-Haus in Bad Homburg, will be a guest at the Faculty of Art and Design. Museum Sinclair-Haus focuses on art and nature. Meyer previously worked at the German Hygiene Museum in Dresden, where she established a reputation for contemporary exhibition formats. Her lecture on her curatorial practice begins at 17 Uhr in the Van-de-Velde-Building. Afterwards, there will be time for a Q&A.
What does it mean to curate ecology without falling into the trap of romanticizing »nature« or using other living beings as mere symbols and projections for human concerns? In her talk, Kathrin Meyer explores the curatorial practice at Museum Sinclair-Haus (Bad Homburg) through a lens of critical honesty: we acknowledge that as human curators making exhibitions for human audiences, we cannot escape our own skin.
However, instead of reinforcing an anthropocentric hierarchy, our approach uses »relational curating« to actively situate the human as one life form among many. Moving past traditional narratives of pure aesthetic beauty or overwhelming environmental crises, we present contemporary art (often in dialogue with the sciences) that investigates the material, lived realities of our interconnectedness. By treating other organisms not as metaphors but as vital counterparts, the exhibition space becomes a site to reframe our own identity, recognizing that the human experience is fundamentally dependent on, and shaped by, a vibrant, more-than-human world.
The talk explores the underlying theoretical frameworks and presents examples from exhibitions at the Museum Sinclair-Haus, including »Fungi: Entangled Worlds« (2024), »Among Plants« (2025, co-curated with Yvonne Volkart), and »Bird’s-Eye Perspectives« (2026).
About Kathrin Meyer:
Kathrin Meyer studied Cultural Studies and Aesthetic Practice in Hildesheim. Since 2020, she has been the director of the Museum Sinclair-Haus in Bad Homburg, part of the Stiftung Kunst und Natur. Before that, she headed the Kunstverein Hildesheim, worked as a curator at the Kestner Gesellschaft, and at the German Hygiene Museum, where she curated, among other projects, the interdisciplinary exhibition »Of Plants and People« (2019/20). Since then, her exhibitions and writing have explored relationships with the living world, playfully bringing together the sensory and experimental qualities of art with insights from the sciences.
Lecture by Kathrin Meyer about »Situated Relations: Eco-Sensible Curating from a Human-Among-Others Perspective«
Date:
Monday, 15 June 2026, 5 p.m.
Location:
Faculty of Art and Design
Van-de-Velde-Building, room 116
Geschwister-Scholl-Straße 7
99423 Weimar