Rethinking the Museum

The Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen is known for its key works of the classical avant-garde, postwar modernism, and international contemporary art. As a public state museum, it collects, preserves, researches, and presents works of art from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. At the same time, it sees itself as a lively place for reflection and the exchange of knowledge. The core of the current work with and about the museum’s holdings is to critically examine the collection, which has been built up since 1961, from the perspective of the present and to think it forward. Six concepts serve as guiding principles: dialogue, society, equality, globality, innovation, and the future. This concerns the dialogue between people, cultures, and artistic disciplines; the issues and crises of the societies in which we live; equality and justice as a common goal; the diversity and challenges arising from globalization; the power and possibilities of technologies; and, finally, the question of how to shape our future.

The Kunstsammlung has set itself the goal of broadening the horizons of the collection from these different perspectives and reflecting on the changing needs of a diverse audience and the associated role of the museum as an institution. In 2021, these issues were discussed together with international art world players at the Rethinking the Museum symposium. These considerations also guide the acquisition of new works for the collection.

New Acquisitions

Like many museums of modern art, the Kunstsammlung has a canonical collection. The majority of the works are by male artists who lived and worked in Europe or North America. From the perspective of a Western-centered art historiography, they are considered important masterpieces of the twentieth century. Recent acquisitions have expanded this canon to include works by women and non-Western artists. They mark the beginning of a long-term process in which the Kunstsammlung is opening up to a polyphonic and inclusive narrative of art history.

Since 2017, the Kunstsammlung has acquired numerous key works by important women artists of the twentieth century, including Etel Adnan, Helen Frankenthaler, Carmen Herrera, Maria Marc, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Gabriele Münter, Lygia Pape, Charlotte Posenenske, Anne Truitt, and Marianne Werefkin. Paintings by Hassan El-Telmisani, Fouad Kamel, and Mayo add perspectives from northern Africa to the Surrealist holdings. The monochrome painting by the South Korean artist Park Seo-Bo complements the works of American Minimalism.

The new acquisitions also reflect developments in contemporary art. With installations and video works, photographs and textile works by artists such as Ed Atkins, Lutz Bacher, Simon Denny, Noa Eshkol, Simone Fattal, Isaac Julien, Henrike Naumann, Senzeni Marasela, Hito Steyerl, Emma Talbot, and Ai Weiwei, important examples of contemporary art have been added to the collection. With their works, Kader Attia, Cao Fei, Isa Genzken, Jutta Koether, Anys Reimann, Dayanita Singh, and Zanele Muholi tie in with feminist, queer, and decolonial discourses. Artists from Düsseldorf such as Thomas Ruff, Katharina Fritsch, Andreas Gursky, Katharina Sieverding, Ursula Schulz-Dornburg, Thomas Schütte, and the young local scene are also represented in the collection.