Kunstmuseen Krefeld, whose venues include the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum and two villas named after Mies van der Rohe, Haus Lange and Haus Esters, will be a German museum in the section of the International Art Critics Association (AICA) from 2022. “My team and I are very pleased to receive the most beautiful contribution for museums in Germany,” says museum director Katia Baudin. “Since 2016, we have been working to establish the unique shape of the Kunstmuseen Krefeld with three architectural gems and a long, multifaceted history. Our unique principle is the DNA of the institution as a place where art, design and architecture intersect, which we then build on while considering contemporary approaches and critical issues. This identity is based on the founding history of the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, which served as a bridge between the museum, urban society, and everyday life from around 1900. Equally affected was the development of senior director Paul Wember, who returned. international avant-garde to Krefeld in the postwar period and established a tradition of site-specific work in Haus Lange. “Then as we now see the museum as a platform and a laboratory, a living space that facilitates new dialogues between the museum, artists and citizens, between disciplines and ages, between the past and the future.” This universal guiding principle is reflected in everything we do, from the exhibition program, from the exhibition of the collection and the forms of our mediation to the visual identity”, explains Katia Baudin.
One of the reasons given by the jurors of the AICA (Association Internationale des Critiques d’Art) of Germany decided that the Kunstmuseen Krefeld and the current program based on the pioneer in the interdisciplinary “polyphony” of the fields of arts, which have become the subject of debate once again. “Established over 120 years ago, the Kunstmuseen Krefeld remain committed to fostering a close relationship between art, design and architecture”, the official statement of the AICA begins, and continues: “For the time being founded Krefeld’s civic museum” was about worshiping the good. a taste in influential fashion, idea art and design used to highlight the diversity of everyday experiences at the Krefeld museum, which has been under the leadership of Katia Baudin since 2016.
Today’s program focuses on continuously assessing the museum’s history and world-class collection in the context of today’s issues and challenges. The iconic venues Haus Lange and Haus Esters remain an impact and inspiration for new productions by contemporary artists, such as Elmgreen & Dragset in 2016, Jasmina Cibic in 2017, or participants in Anders Wohnen in 2019, which percentage Bauhaus noted.
New perspectives on modernism and its interdisciplinary visions are frequent themes in the program and are accentuated by carefully considered affinities between contemporary and historical approaches, as exemplified by Sonia Delaunay and Andrea Zittel in Haus Lange and Haus Esters in 2022.
Similarly, the Sammlungssatelliten (Satellite Collection) established in 2018 brings contemporary artists and designers into dialogue with aspects of the collection and the history of the institution and encourages them to develop new work, such as Shannon Bool (2022) or Marcel. Odenbach (2021). Collaborations with artists and designers often lead to significant acquisitions or donations, so that the collection grows continuously and in close connection with the exhibition program.
The focus is essentially on an experiential approach that often leads invited visitors to actively participate in the exhibition – as happened with Christianis Falsnaes in 2018 and HL DIALOGUE HE between Adolf Luther and Julio Le Parc in 2022. The large-scale thematic exhibitions in the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, which opened in 2016 following major renovations, highlight particular aspects of the collection, combining new research and unusual perspectives with visually appealing presentations that become accessible. visitors in various ways Beuys & Duchamp (2021) et ON THE AIR (2022).
