The Kunsthalle Bielefeld is a modern and contemporary art museum in Bielefeld, Germany. It was designed by

Philip Johnson Philip Cortelyou Johnson (July 8, 1906 – January 25, 2005) was an American architect best known for his works of modern and postmodern architecture. Among his best-known designs are his modernist Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut; the pos ...

in 1968, and paid for by the businessman and art patron

Rudolf August Oetker Rudolf August Oetker (20 September 1916 – 16 January 2007) was a German entrepreneur and former member of the Nazi Party, who became a billionaire running his private food company Oetker-Gruppe, founded by his grandfather August Oetker. ...

.27. September 1968: Das „Richard-Kaselowsky-Haus – Kunsthalle der Stadt Bielefeld" wird eröffnet
Bernd J. Wagner. City of

Bielefeld Bielefeld () is a city in the Ostwestfalen-Lippe Region in the north-east of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With a population of 341,755, it is also the most populous city in the administrative region (''Regierungsbezirk'') of Detmold and the ...

Collection and exhibitions

Initiated in 1950 with a donation by Oetker and gradually expanded from 1954 with municipal acquisitions, the collection focuses on

Expressionism Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

, international sculpture, and contemporary art. The permanent collection features a wide array of 20th-century art, including paintings by

Pablo Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...

and

Max Beckmann Max Carl Friedrich Beckmann (February 12, 1884 – December 27, 1950) was a German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, and writer. Although he is classified as an Expressionist artist, he rejected both the term and the movement. In the 1920 ...

, works by the ''

Blaue Reiter ''Der Blaue Reiter'' (The Blue Rider) is a designation by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc for their exhibition and publication activities, in which both artists acted as sole editors in the almanac of the same name, first published in mid-May ...

'' group and movements centred on

László Moholy-Nagy László Moholy-Nagy (; ; born László Weisz; July 20, 1895 – November 24, 1946) was a Hungarian painter and photographer as well as a professor in the Bauhaus school. He was highly influenced by constructivism and a strong advocate of the i ...

and

Oskar Schlemmer Oskar Schlemmer (4 September 1888 – 13 April 1943) was a German painter, sculptor, designer and choreographer associated with the Bauhaus school. In 1923, he was hired as Master of Form at the Bauhaus theatre workshop, after working at the w ...

, and more recent art from the 1970s and '80s. The museum stands in a

sculpture garden A sculpture garden or sculpture park is an outdoor garden or park which includes the presentation of sculpture, usually several permanently sited works in durable materials in landscaped surroundings. A sculpture garden may be private, owned by a ...

featuring works by

Auguste Rodin François Auguste René Rodin (12 November 184017 November 1917) was a French sculptor, generally considered the founder of modern sculpture. He was schooled traditionally and took a craftsman-like approach to his work. Rodin possessed a uniqu ...

Henry Moore Henry Spencer Moore (30 July 1898 – 31 August 1986) was an English artist. He is best known for his semi- abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. As well as sculpture, Moore produced ...

Richard Serra Richard Serra (born November 2, 1938) is an American artist known for his large-scale sculptures made for site-specific landscape, urban, and architectural settings. Serra's sculptures are notable for their material quality and exploration o ...

Ólafur Elíasson Olafur Eliasson ( is, Ólafur Elíasson; born 5 February 1967) is an Icelandic–Danish artist known for sculptured and large-scale installation art employing elemental materials such as light, water, and air temperature to enhance the viewer's ...

and other modern sculptors. At the 50th

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

in 2003, the Kunsthalle presented the documentary "Ilya und Emila Kabakov: Die Utopische Stadt. 1997-2003", which was on permanent display in the "Utopia Station Now!". As part of its series of exhibitions of important museum collections of twentieth- and twenty-first-century art, the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn presented »The Unknown Bielefeld Collection« in 2011. The Kunsthalle also hosts temporary exhibitions to complement the permanent collection. Recent examples have been devoted to

Emil Nolde Emil Nolde (born Hans Emil Hansen; 7 August 1867 – 13 April 1956) was a German-Danish painter and printmaker. He was one of the first Expressionists, a member of Die Brücke, and was one of the first oil painting and watercolor painters of th ...

Rirkrit Tiravanija Rirkrit Tiravanija ( th, ฤกษ์ฤทธิ์ ตีระวนิช, pronunciation: [] or Tea-rah-vah-nitJerry Saltz (May 7, 2007)Conspicuous Consumption''New York Magazine''.) is a Thai contemporary artist residing in New York City, Be ...

, and the locally born artist Peter August Böckstiegel together with

Conrad Felixmüller Conrad Felixmüller (21 May 1897 – 24 March 1977) was a German Expressionism, expressionist painter and printmaker. Born in Dresden as Conrad Felix Müller, he chose Felixmüller as his ''Art-name, nom d'artiste''. Early life and career He a ...

. The 1991 exhibition "Picasso's Surrealism: 1925–1937", one of five internationally renowned Picasso exhibitions in 1984, 1988, 1993, and 2011, attracted 67,000 visitors; an exhibition in 2007–08, featuring art from 1937 in a variety of styles, had 47,000. The museum also offers guided tours, teaching activities for children, and a library.

Architecture

Bielefeld Parkanlage Kunsthalle - Mai 1985

The museum is located on the south-west edge of Bielefeld's

old town In a city or town, the old town is its historic or original core. Although the city is usually larger in its present form, many cities have redesignated this part of the city to commemorate its origins after thorough renovations. There are ma ...

. It was built in 1968 by the American architect

in the International Style that he had founded, and is his only museum building in Europe. Johnson had been invited by the museum's director

Joachim Wolfgang von Moltke Joachim (; ''Yəhōyāqīm'', "he whom Yahweh has set up"; ; ) was, according to Christian tradition, the husband of Saint Anne and the father of Mary, the mother of Jesus. The story of Joachim and Anne first appears in the Biblical apocrypha ...

and

in 1966. In 1994,

Frank O. Gehry Frank Owen Gehry, , FAIA (; ; born ) is a Canadian-born American architect and designer. A number of his buildings, including his private residence in Santa Monica, California, have become world-renowned attractions. His works are considered ...

proposed an extension to the existing building; it was never realized. The museum was refurbished in 2002. Cubic in shape and with a square ground level, it has three storeys above ground, two below,Kunsthalle Bielefeld (10 / 02)
art-in.de. 7 October 2002. Retrieved 16 September 2010. and a total exhibition space of . The facade is of red

sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates) ...

Naming dispute

When he endowed the building, Rudolf Oetker expressed a desire for it be called the ''Richard-Kaselowsky-Haus'', after his stepfather. Kaselowsky was a controversial figure in Bielefeld due to his Nazi past, including membership in not only the

NSDAP The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...

but also the

Freundeskreis der Wirtschaft The Freundeskreis der Wirtschaft, or ''Circle of Friends of the Economy'' (which became known as "Freundeskreis Reichsführer SS", "Freundeskreis Himmler" or " Keppler Circle") was a group of German industrialists whose aim was to strengthen the t ...

.„Das Thema ist erledigt"
Karl-Heinz Steinkühler, ''

Focus Focus, or its plural form foci may refer to: Arts * Focus or Focus Festival, former name of the Adelaide Fringe arts festival in South Australia Film *''Focus'', a 1962 TV film starring James Whitmore * ''Focus'' (2001 film), a 2001 film based ...

'', 23 November 1998. Interview with Rudolf August Oetker. Retrieved 16 September 2010. This led to a debate in Bielefeld, coinciding with the general social unrest of 1968 and becoming a major theme of it. The composer

Hans Werner Henze Hans Werner Henze (1 July 1926 – 27 October 2012) was a German composer. His large oeuvre of works is extremely varied in style, having been influenced by serialism, atonality, Stravinsky, Italian music, Arabic music and jazz, as well as t ...

cancelled the piano concert he had written for the inauguration, and the Minister-President of

North Rhine-Westphalia North Rhine-Westphalia (german: Nordrhein-Westfalen, ; li, Noordrien-Wesfale ; nds, Noordrhien-Westfalen; ksh, Noodrhing-Wäßßfaale), commonly shortened to NRW (), is a States of Germany, state (''Land'') in Western Germany. With more tha ...

, Heinz Kühn, excused himself from the ceremony along with two federal ministers. This led to the event, with 1,200 invitees, being completely cancelled – but the city council stuck to its choice of name. The "silent" opening on 27 September 1968 was accompanied by protests.Von Tätern und Wohltätern: Zur Umbenennung der Kunsthalle Bielefeld

World Socialist Web Site The World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) is the website of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). It describes itself as an "online newspaper of the international Trotskyist movement". The WSWS publishes articles and analys ...

, 2 December 1998. Retrieved 16 September 2010. A memorial to Kaselowsky, commemorating him as a victim of the heavy aerial bombing of September 1944, remains in the entrance hall to this day. In the following years, the Kunsthalle ceased using the controversial part of its name in public. The discussion was revived in 1998 when the then-director, Thomas Kellein, sought to strengthen ties with the Oetkers and resurrected the Kaselowsky name. After the attempt to reach an uncontroversial solution failed, the city council changed the name to simply ''Kunsthalle Bielefeld'', whereupon Rudolf Oetker ended his support and withdrew all the works that he had loaned to the collection.Man nehme Dr. Oetker
Michael Westphal, ''

Berliner Zeitung The ''Berliner Zeitung'' (, ''Berlin Newspaper'') is a daily newspaper based in Berlin, Germany. Founded in East Germany in 1945, it is the only East German paper to achieve national prominence since reunification. It is published by Berliner ...

'', 10 November 1998. Retrieved 16 September 2010.

Management

The Kunsthalle's current director is Friedrich Meschede (since 2011). Former directors include Thomas Kellein (1996–2011), Ulrich Weisner (1974–1996), Joachim Wolfgang von Moltke (1961–1974), and Gustav Vriesen (1954–1961).

External links

Home page in English

Notes

{{authority control Art museums and galleries in Germany Museums in North Rhine-Westphalia Art museums established in 1968 Philip Johnson buildings 1968 establishments in West Germany Buildings and structures in Bielefeld