Germany: memories of a Nation – exhibition reviews

What you need to know

Germany: Memories of a Nation, a new exhibition examining 600 years of German history, has opened at the British Museum, London. The show, timed to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, presents 200 objects signifying Germany's cultural and political changes from the Renaissance throughout the troubled 20th century to the post-war economic recovery.

It features art by Albrecht Durer, Hans Holbein and Gerhard Richter, a Gutenberg bible, design from the Bauhaus movement and modern icons such as the VW Beetle.

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The show is being staged in collaboration with the BBC, which will feature museum director Neil MacGregor's Radio 4 series of the same name. Runs until 25 January.

What the critics like

Weighty moral questions lie at the heart of this exhibition, which "addresses those themes explicitly and imaginatively", says Peter Aspden in the Financial Times. The story of Germany is told through objects that have been chosen for their complicated micro-histories and there are rich metaphorical pickings everywhere you look.

The exhibition has "a way of using small but hugely significant items to evoke a myriad of different eras and aspirations, traumas and triumphs", says Richard Morrison in The Times. And it offers a myriad of antidotes to all those tabloid stereotypes of Europe's most powerful nation.

This "highly contentious and hugely ambitious exhibition" attempts to tell an object-led narrative of the German-speaking peoples, says Marina Valzey on the Arts Desk. The spectrum is very broad, but every object on view is worth looking at, and even more, thinking about.

What they don't like

It is "a potentially fascinating exhibition let down by unimaginative presentation, with far too many exhibits crowded together with far too much text", says Mark Hudson in the Daily Telegraph. With more stringent selection and radical design, the objects might have told a genuinely powerful story.