The dachshund is the muse in an exhibition showcasing the sausage dog's history in art

BREMEN, Germany (AP) — The humble dachshund is taking center stage in a new exhibition in Germany that explores the history of the sausage dog in art — and visitors are welcome to bring their four-legged friends along.

“The Dachshund: An Icon off the Leash" opens at the Kunsthalle Bremen on Saturday, showcasing artwork by dachshund owners and fans including Pablo Picasso, David Hockney and Andy Warhol. In addition to painting, drawing, photography and video, visitors can admire delights such as a wealth of stuffed toy dogs and many other dachshund-themed objects.

Museum director Christoph Grunenberg believes it's the world's first exhibition dedicated to the dachshund in art, rather than dogs in general.

“There are many artists who owned dachshunds, who were inspired by the dachshund, loved the dachshund,” Grunenberg said. “It was like a muse and there is an incredible wealth of representation of the dachshund in very different styles by significant artists.”

“We wanted to take the dachshund as an object, as an inspiration to artists, and trace it through history in all its different forms and important works of art by Picasso, Warhol and Hockney and also ephemera,” he added.

The dog has a long association with Germany. Kaiser Wilhelm II had dachshunds, or Dackel in German; and Britain's Queen Victoria was a fan of the dogs, some brought from Germany. But the show casts its net wider, with exhibits brought in from Edinburgh, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh among others.

German artist Thorsten Brinkmann honored the compact dogs’ reputation as a “handbag dog” with a bronze sculpture that features a handbag on dachshund legs. He also provided the colorful “Toxie Love” installation in the exhibition’s first room, which sets a playful tone for the show.

The dachshund, he said, has “a very curious, very special form, very long — kind of too long, actually, with the short legs — and it looks already surrealistic to me.” He was helped by objects loaned by the Dachshund Museum in Regensburg, in southern Germany.

For several hours on Thursdays and Saturdays, the museum will let dachshunds and other small dogs into three of its eight rooms for a look and a sniff.

Among the conditions: they must have a maximum shoulder height of 30 centimeters (about 1 foot) and an online time-slot ticket. A “Dachshund Lounge” will be offered as a waiting area.

“We want to take the dog seriously as a personality and the dog can walk around, can interact, will be able to watch videos, look outside the window, smell — and of course that’s what the dog really is interested in,” Grunenberg said.

Finnish photographer Elina Brotherus' dachshund, Marcello, already checked out the wares ahead of the opening of the exhibition, which features Brotherus' pictures of the 13-year-old dog.

Marcello has been her model since 2013, Brotherus said. “I did not manage to have children, so then we got him and he’s my baby.”

“There’s something so, like, cute and philosophical and special about these dogs,” she said.

Kelsey Crossman, a business developer who lives in Bremen and originally hails from Florida, was invited to a preview of the show at a dachshund meetup group and explored it with her dachshund, Leonidas, or Leo for short.

She said the dogs' appeal is in “their attitudes — they’re small, but they’re very strong and a little stubborn, probably like myself.” And, of course, they're light enough to be easily transported.

Crossman enjoyed the dachshund collectibles in Brinkmann's installation — “a really cool collection of little dachshunds that you might see at grandma’s house, or collectors' things, and a ton of stuffed animals.”

But, she added: “Leo is not allowed near them because he will certainly grab one from the exhibit.”