The Kunstmuseen Krefeld—whose venues comprise the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum and two villas designed by Mies van der Rohe, Haus Lange and Haus Esters—have been named Museum of the Year 2022 by the German section of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA). “My team and I are extremely delighted to receive the most prestigious award for museums in Germany,” says museum director Katia Baudin. “Since 2016, we have been working hard to raise the unique profile of the Kunstmuseen Krefeld with their three architectural jewels and their long, multifaceted history. Our starting point is the unique DNA of the institution as a place where art, design, and architecture intersect, which we then build upon while taking contemporary approaches and issues into consideration.” This identity is rooted in the founding history of the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, which has served as a bridge between museum, urban society, and everyday life since around 1900. It is equally influenced by the progressive programming of former director Paul Wember, who brought the international avant-garde to Krefeld in the postwar period and established the tradition of site-specific work in Haus Lange. “Then as now, we see the museum as a platform and laboratory, a living space that facilitates new dialogues between the museum, artists, and citizens, between disciplines and eras, between the past and the future. This universal guiding principle is reflected in everything we do, from the exhibition program, the presentation of the collection and our mediation formats to our visual identity,” explains Katia Baudin.
One of the reasons given by the jury of AICA (Association Internationale des Critiques d’Art) Germany for their decision was the fact that the Kunstmuseen Krefeld and their current program are a groundbreaking pioneer in the interdisciplinary “polyphony” of artistic fields, which has become a subject of discussion once again. “Founded more than 120 years ago, the Kunstmuseen Krefeld remain committed to fostering a close relationship between art, design and architecture,” begins AICA’s official statement, and continues: “While the founding phase of Krefeld’s ‘civic museum’ was about cultivating ‘good taste’ in an influential way, the idea of using art and design to illustrate the diversity of everyday experiences lives on in the Krefeld museum, which has been under the direction of Katia Baudin since 2016.”
The current program is focused on continually reassessing the museums’ history and world-class collection in the context of contemporary issues and challenges. The iconic venues of Haus Lange and Haus Esters remain the impetus and inspiration for new productions by contemporary artists, like Elmgreen & Dragset in 2016, Jasmina Cibic in 2017, or the participants in Anders wohnen in 2019, which marked the centenary of the Bauhaus.
New perspectives on modernism and its interdisciplinary visions are a recurring theme throughout the program and are accentuated by carefully considered juxtapositions between contemporary and historical approaches, as exemplified by Sonia Delaunay and Andrea Zittel in Haus Lange and Haus Esters in 2022.
In a similar way, the Sammlungssatelliten (Collection Satellites) format 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 acquisitions or significant donations, enabling the collection to grow continuously and in close connection with the exhibition program.
The focus is essentially on an experimental approach that often leads to visitors being invited to actively participate in the exhibition—as was the case with Christian Falsnaes in 2018 and the HL HE Dialog between Adolf Luther and Julio Le Parc in 2022. Large-scale thematic exhibitions in the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, which reopened in 2016 following major renovation, emphasize particular aspects of the collection, combining new research and unusual perspectives with visually appealing presentations that are made accessible to visitors in a variety of ways like Beuys & Duchamp (2021) and ON AIR (2022).
