Out and about with the ‘Blue Riders’

The Museum Wiesbaden, in collaboration with the Lenbachhaus in Munich, the Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum in Bremen and the Fondazione Werefkin in Ascona, is presenting the large-scale exhibition ‘Die Blauen Reiterinnen’. To mark the opening of the exhibition project in Wiesbaden (from 22 October), students on the Online Communication study programme at Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences devised a high-profile publicity campaign. In the run-up to the exhibition opening, several initiatives were carried out — ranging from a ‘Blue Bench’ in Wiesbaden’s Kurpark, a walk by the museum team with a vaulting horse, to surprise giveaways.

The campaign picks up on aspects of the exhibition that the female artists themselves highlighted: In their pictures, they make deliberate references to the prescribed ‘role of women’ in a male-dominated society that disadvantages them, highlight women’s work and care work, explore body images and address gender issues — even back then.

The students therefore decided to incorporate condoms bearing the slogan ‘Ride Safely’ into their campaign. These are being distributed, amongst other places, in the university’s freshers’ goody bags and at museum events. A blue bench, specially commissioned by the university, was erected in the Kurpark in early September as an eye-catching guerrilla marketing initiative. This was followed on 23 September by an event in which museum staff dressed in blue drew attention to the exhibition in Wiesbaden with a vaulting horse. Passers-by and museum visitors were also invited to take part in an impromptu painting session in front of the museum.

“We want to leave a mark that is long overdue,” says Prof. Dr Patricia Bliemeister, project leader on the Online Communication study programme at h_da. “As part of our collaboration with the Landesmuseum Wiesbaden, we have developed a campaign for public spaces in the run-up to the special exhibition ‘Die Blauen Reiterinnen’, which arouses curiosity and whets the appetite for a visit to the museum. The visibility of the female artists and the appreciation of their works have kept us ‘on our toes’.”

More about the exhibition: https://museum-wiesbaden.de/blaue-reiterinnen