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"The Spirit of Money" exhibition: satirical comments on the topic of "Money" - The Aareal Bank caricature collection has been opened in the Wilhelm-Busch-Museum

The Wilhelm-Busch-Museum, Hanover, opened the "Spirit of Money" caricature exhibition yesterday as part of its spring festival.

Hanover/Wiesbaden, 18 May 2009. The Wilhelm-Busch-Museum, Hanover, opened the "Spirit of Money" caricature exhibition yesterday as part of its spring festival. The exhibition contains 70 works from the collection of the Aareal Bank headquartered in Wiesbaden. They reflect on the subject of money from many and varied standpoints, most of which are sceptical and ironic.

As Dr Wolf Schumacher, Chairman of the Management Board of Aareal Bank AG, said when explaining the bank's cooperation with the famous Wilhelm-Busch-Museum, Deutsches Museum für Karikatur und kritische Grafik: " Society's interest in a differentiated debate on the subject of money has been getting stronger in what are currently difficult economic times. We at Aareal Bank have a duty to be good corporate citizens and we discharge that duty in various ways. That is why we have decided to open our caricature collection to the wider public, because we see it as contributing to the current public debate."

Over a period of almost two decades Aareal Bank and its predecessor built up a collection of ca 300 historical and contemporary caricatures and social criticism-type graphics on the topic of money. The collection holds many important caricaturists, past and present, such as William Hogarth and Thomas Rowlandson, Karl Arnold and Eduard Thöny, Ronald Searle and Horst Haitzinger, Jean Jacques Sempé and Saul Steinberg. Said Prof Dr Hans Joachim Neyer, director of the Wilhelm-Busch-Museum, " The remarkable Aareal Bank collection is an ironic and sometimes humorous, sometimes biting and sceptical 'companion piece' to the serious money business of the bank. That is by no means a matter of course, when money still makes the world go round."

Aareal Bank is donating its caricature collection as a permanent loan to the Wilhelm-Busch-Museum. The current exhibition presents a selection and runs until 2 August 2009.

"The Spirit of Money":
the Aareal Bank caricature collection in the Wilhelm-Busch-Museum in Hanover
17 May - 2 August 2009

Opening hours of the Wilhelm-Busch-Museum:
Tuesday to Sunday and on public holidays: 11 am to 6 pm

Address:
Georgengarten, 30167 Hannover
Tel.: +49 511 16 99 99-11/16

The Wilhelm-Busch-Museum
The body responsible for the Wilhelm-Busch-Museum/Deutsches Museum für Karikatur und kritische Grafik in Hanover is the Wilhelm-Busch-Gesellschaft, founded in 1930, a registered association under private law with ca 2,500 members. The task and aim of the association is to collect the work of Wilhelm Busch, to give it scholarly treatment and to make it accessible to the public; further, to foster the development of caricature and graphic artworks containing social criticism as a recognised branch of the fine arts.