In dialogue with: The Body as Worldview – The Greek Kouros and Votive Offerings in Dialogue

12.02.2026, 19:00

With Dr. Matthias Recke and Prof. Franziska Nori

The exhibition Anatomy of Fragility – Images of the Body in Art and Science opens with the Kroisos Kouros, an archaic Greek statue from the Collection of Classical Antiquities and Sculpture Hall of Goethe University Frankfurt. The two-meter-high male figure from the 6th century BCE stands upright, gazing into the distance. Rather than representing an individual body, it embodies a culturally defined ideal of the “beautiful body.” In Greek society, the free adult male was the measure of all things – symbol of a strictly hierarchical order that excluded women and slaves.

In the same parcours, visitors also encounter votive offerings – a timeless cultural phenomenon in which hope, healing, and gratitude take material form. The exhibition presents both Etruscan terracotta votives from the Collection of Classical Archaeology at Justus Liebig University Giessen and later wax votives from the collection of Hans and Benedikt Hipp.

In conversation with Prof. Franziska Nori, Director of the Frankfurter Kunstverein, Dr. Matthias Recke, curator of the Collection of Classical Antiquities and Sculpture Hall at Goethe University Frankfurt, will illuminate the tension between normative body ideals and individual pleas for healing. Together they will explore how body images oscillate between ideal and fragment, between worldview and personal necessity.

This thematic guided tour is part of the exhibition’s public program. In front of the artworks themselves, we invite you to join the experts and cooperation partners for an open exchange about what the fragility of the body can mean to us all.

The tour costs €5 plus admission. No registration required. The event will take place in German.

We look forward to welcoming you!