Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg

The Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg is an art museum in central Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, opened 1994. It presents modern and contemporary art and is financed by the ''Kunststiftung Volkswagen.''

It takes up aspects of the industrial city of Wolfsburg, which was only founded in 1938: modernity, urbanity, internationality and quality. The Kunstmuseum is located at the southern end of the pedestrian zone in the vicinity of the Alvar-Aalto-Kulturhaus, Theater, Planetarium and CongressPark.

The museum

The Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg opened in 1994 with a retrospective exhibition on the French artist Fernand Léger. The museum's founding director was the Dutchman Gijs van Tuyl, who remained in the position until 2004. He was followed by the Swiss art historian Markus Brüderlin, who was director from January 2006 until his death in March 2014. The museum has been headed since February 1, 2015 by Ralf Beil, from 2006 director of the Institut Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt.

Architecture

The Hamburg architectural firm of Peter Schweger and Partners planned the building of the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg as a transparent urban loggia with an extensive overarching glass roof over the open Hollerplatz. The central exhibition hall is 16-meter high with a quadratic ground plan measuring 40 meters on each side. Its flexible possibilities allow for an individualized architecture conceived to meet the specific needs of each show. The hall is two-storied on three of its sides and enclosed by further exhibition spaces. The entire exhibition surface encompasses 3500 square meters. In conjunction with the 2007 Japan and the West exhibition, a Japan Garden was created in the inner courtyard of the building. The architect Kazuhisa Kawamura modeled it after the Zen garden of the Ryōan-ji temple in Kyōto and included elements from the architecture of Mies van der Rohe to symbolize the dialog between East and West.

Exhibitions

Since its opening, the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg has presented over 130 exhibitions on modern and contemporary art. Large-scale retrospectives from the field of classic modern art, for example Fernand Léger and Bart van der Leck, alternate with survey shows such as ''Full House, German Open, The Italian Metamorphosis 1943–1968'' and ''Blast to Freeze.'' Monographic exhibitions devoted to contemporary artists include Carl Andre, Andy Warhol, Luc Tuymans, Olafur Eliasson, Frank Stella, James Turrell and Imi Knoebel. With the start of the new directorship in 2006, the exhibition program placed contentual accents in large-scale historical and thematic shows (''ArchiSkulptur, Japan and the West, Interior/Exterior, The Art of Deceleration''), solo exhibitions (''James Turrell'' and ''Alberto Giacometti'') as well as in mid-career retrospectives (including ''Douglas Gordon, Neo Rauch'' and ''Philip Taaffe'') that took up the theme of modernism in the 21st century, illuminating it from various perspectives. Different exhibitions are shown in the hall and the gallery. With “Wolfsburg Unlimited. A City as World Laboratory,” Ralf Beil presented his first major exhibition in which the city was reflected in the museum – and the museum in the city.

The collection

The Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg began collecting international contemporary art in 1994. The range included late modernism, Minimal Art, Conceptual Art and Arte Povera. Works by a younger generation of artists were subsequently added. Focus was placed on prominent major works, ensembles and work phases as well as the exemplary presentation of artistic developments. Instead of documenting “tendencies,” the concentration was placed on artists and works representing central aspects of the wide field of contemporary art. Artists in the collection include Carl Andre, Christian Boltanski, Douglas Gordon, Andreas Gursky, Georg Herold, Anselm Kiefer, Mario Merz, Gerhard Merz, Bruce Nauman, Neo Rauch, Burhan Dogancay, Cindy Sherman, Philip Taaffe, Jeff Wall, Olafur Eliasson, Douglas Gordon, Thomas Schütte and Jeppe Hein