The Zorn villa and Liebermann Villa: Jewish cultural heritage between the private and public
Matilda Eriksson, PhD student, University of Oxford and part of the Arts & Humanities Research Council-financed pan European collaboration research project 'Jewish Country Houses'.
This presentation explores the Liebermann Villa in Berlin and the Zorn House in Mora; two homes that reveal how their owners, who were famous artists and cultural celebrities of their time, negotiated with personal and national identity in modern Europe.
While rooted in very different geographical and cultural contexts, both artists transformed their homes through the collection of art and objects, turning private residences into reflections of taste, social standing, and cultural belonging. Yet these were never purely private spaces: interviews, depictions of the houses and home-studios in the artists’ own works, and photographs circulated in the press, making them semi-public cultural spaces during the artists’ lifetimes. Thus, revealing the liminal, shifting nature of the private/public divide and how both homes functioned as public-facing environments that shaped identity and cultural memory.
This presentation highlights some of the ways that the Liebermann's and the Zorn's engaged with modernity, through their collections, material culture, and domestic spaces, and how these homes served as stages and public-facing cultural spaces long before becoming museums.
