Storm of Progress: German Art after 1800 from the Saint Louis Art Museum presents the Museum’s world-class collection of German art of the last 200 years. From Romanticism in the 1800s to the eclectic globalism that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, this exhibition highlights how art, politics, and history are inextricably linked.

For centuries, the concept of the storm has provided German artists with a powerful metaphor for forces of nature, destruction, and the hope of rebirth. Since the beginning of the 19th century, Germany’s upheavals found expression in its art as political and cultural conventions underwent radical change, paving the way for both tyrannies and revolutions.

The exhibition brings together 120 works in chronological and thematic sections that explore key ideas and events from German art and history spanning national unification, industrialization, World Wars I and II, the Holocaust, and the Cold War and its aftermath. Art in a wide range of media, from paintings to decorative arts, shows the richness of the Museum’s collection, and many works will be on view for the first time.

Storm of Progress is cocurated by Simon Kelly, curator of modern and contemporary art; Hannah Klemm, associate curator of modern and contemporary art; Melissa Venator, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow for Modern Art; and Molly Moog, research assistant for modern and contemporary art.