Kunstmuseen Krefeld
Kaiser Wilhelm Museum
Joseph-Beuys-Platz 1
47798 Krefeld
Germany
Hours: Tuesday-Sunday 11am-5pm; Monday closed
Haus Lange and Haus Esters
Wilhelmshofallee 91-97
47800 Krefeld
(closed until March 16)
Hours: Tuesday, Thursday-Sunday 11am-5pm; Wednesday 3pm-9pm; Monday closed
Haus Lange and Haus Esters
March 17, 2019-January 26, 2020
Alternatives for Living
blueprints for haus lange and haus esters
How did we live yesterday, how do we live today, how will we live tomorrow? These questions will be examined in Haus Lange and Haus Esters. The Bauhaus icons by Mies van der Rohe will be transformed into experimental exhibition and discussion platforms as well as fab labs. Around 20 international artists, architects and designers will be realising concepts of living for the two houses and the garden area. The themes of dwelling and cohabitation will be presented in an excitingly composed sequence over the course of a whole year—from prologue to epilogue. Three themes will structure the exhibitions: Utopia, Mobility and Dystopia.
Curators: Katia Baudin, Magdalena Holzhey, Sylvia Martin
Artists, designers, architects (selection):
Banz & Bowinkel, Bless, Franck Bragigand, Dunne & Raby, Didier Fiùza Faustino, Michal Helfman, Tamara Henderson, Laura Lima, Slavs & Tatars, Raumlabor, Andreas Schmitten, Superflex, Apolonija Sušteršic, Christopher Kulendran Thomas, Andrea Zittel.
Prologue
Haus Lange
March 17-April 14
Mixed Reality
Alternatives for Living will start off with Haus Lange being transformed into a site where two different realities confront each other. Employing the means of Augmented Reality, the building as it actually exists today will fuse with the historical domestic situation.
Haus Esters
March 17–August 18, 2018
Participation and Science
An extensive accompanying programme will be offered in Haus Esters. A series of lectures presents current research on architecture and the domestic culture of the 1920s and 1930s as well as examining present-day living situations.
Act 1: Utopia
Haus Lange
May 5, 2019–January 26, 2020
The first part begins in May 2019 in Haus Lange with the exhibition UTOPIA. Artists, designers and architects realise new living concepts for the spaces in the villa and develop visionary notions of cohabitation, free from actual social or material prerequisites.
Act 2: Mobility
Gardens Haus Lange and Haus Esters
July 7, 2019–January 26, 2020
In July 2019, the exhibition format extends out into the outdoor space around the two houses. The garden corresponds to a transitional territory where private and public areas of life flow into each other. In addition, the American artist Andrea Zittel will remodel the garden house and transform it into a café.
Act 3: Dystopia
Haus Esters
September 15, 2019–January 26, 2020
Beginning in September, dystopian approaches will be shown in Haus Esters that respond to the utopian designs on display in Haus Lange. The result is a dialogue between the two houses that addresses the potentials, dreams and nightmares of cohabitation in the future.
Epilogue
January 2020
Living Bauhaus Today and Tomorrow
Kaiser Wilhelm Museum
March 29, 2019–September 15, 2019
Collection Satellite #3
Ola Vasiljeva // The Werkbund
House of W.
In conjunction with Collection Satellite #3, the artist Ola Vasiljeva addresses the inequity in treatment of women designers in the German Werkbund. Their male peers regarded the production of female designers as minor. As a response to this criticism a group of women realised the restrained House of Women at the 1914 German Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne. Inspired by these events, Vasiljeva will realise an installation in which the boundaries between the male and the female are porous. The holdings of an extraordinary collection of German Werkbund objects that has been a part of the Kunstmuseen Krefeld since 1923—served as Vasiljeva’s starting point.
Curator: Constanze Zawadzky
Kaiser Wilhelm Museum
June 7, 2019–late 2019
Focus Collection
The ABC of Bauhaus
In a large-scale presentation of works from its own holdings, the Kunstmuseen Krefeld will mark the centennial of the Bauhaus by tracing the multifaceted impulses left behind by the Bauhaus in its collection. Works by masters and students such as as Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Lázló Moholy-Nagy, Lyonel Feininger and Josef Albers are at the heart of the show. Thematic galleries extend out from this historical nucleus and are devoted to Bauhaus precursors such as the German Werkbund, Expressionism and related movements like De Stijl and Constructivism.
Curators: Magdalena Holzhey, Sylvia Martin
Kaiser Wilhelm Museum
November 10, 2019–February 23, 2020
Folklore & Avant-Garde
The Reception of Popular Traditions in the Age of Modernism
Folklore & Avant-Garde aims to reassess our understanding of modernism, a century after its development. While modernism is usually associated with a break from past traditions and a universalistic approach, is this really the case? For the first time, this exhibition aims to examine the role played by local, popular traditions, in particular handicrafts and folk art, in the development of a new artistic language by the key protagonists of the avant-garde, in particular in Europe and North America—regions where modernism was “born” and took root. By exploring the phenomenon within the context of the times, this show offers a new perspective through a historical lens on issues impacting contemporary artistic practice. Although international in focus, the exhibition’s point of departure is Krefeld. For it was here, that the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum exhibited and collected not only avant-garde art and applied arts, but also folk art and tribal arts to inspire local craftsmen. Folklore & Avant-Garde is a part of the “BAUHAUS100 im Westen” programme.
Curators: Katia Baudin, in collaboration with Elina Knorpp
Artists, architects (selection):
Anni Albers, Josef Albers, Heinrich Campendonk, Sonia Delaunay, Natalia Goncharova, Vasily Kandinsky, Michail Larionow, Le Corbusier, Charles Sheeler, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Frank Lloyd Wright and examples of folk art.
Director of Kunstmuseen Krefeld: Katia Baudin
Press contact
Katharina Mannel, katharina.mannel [at] krefeld.de
