Town Scapes – icons of urban change

This year, Ursula Edelmann, who died in 2024, would have turned 100: The museum is therefore dedicating two presentations from its own collections to the photographer, who captured public buildings in Frankfurt like no other and was primarily responsible for object photography at the Städel Museum and Liebieghaus for decades: the permanent exhibition “Frankfurt Einst?” (Frankfurt Once Upon a Time?) features architectural photographs of urban buildings and facilities – a central theme of her work. In the old building of the Collectors' Museum (13th Collectors' Room), photographs of the reconstruction of the Historical Museum in the 1950s and 1960s are on display.

The museum team was able to conduct an interview with the photographer in 2023, in which Ursula Edelmann herself talks about her photography and her life as a photographer in Frankfurt. The interview is available here.

Parallel to the presentation at the Frankfurt Historical Museum, the PanGallery in Frankfurt is dedicating a comprehensive retrospective of her photographic work to the photographer. The exhibition “URSULA EDELMANN 100” (February 25, 2026, to March 30, 2026) shows well-known motifs as well as numerous previously unpublished works from the period from 1949 onwards.