The eponymous song “This Must Be The Place” by the American rock band Talking Heads from 1983 is a love song. A love song without a narrative story, without a fairy-tale narration. It describes situations, actions, and feelings in fragments. It is neither temporally nor spatially defined, without claiming absolute truth. This is what the song has in common with fairy tales.

These very fairy tales serve as the starting point for the sculpture exhibition in the historic garden of Villa Schöningen. Like in a fairy tale, one encounters wondrous events, works that bear social-realist or utopian features, offer a view of societal conditions, and serve as documents of their time.

Not a love song, but a garden with works that, after a year and a half of isolation, provide a new perspective on the here and now, on the immediate surroundings, social structures, everyday life, and perhaps even one’s own four walls.

This must be the place!