2024 program

Exhibitions

HERE AND NOW at Museum Ludwig: And Yesterday and Tomorrow
March 9–October 13, 2024
Curator: Miriam Szwast

The exhibition series HERE AND NOW regularly puts work at the Museum Ludwig to test and challenges the customary and familiar structures of organizing exhibitions. The latest iteration of the series connects here and now with yesterday and tomorrow. It focuses on the ground on which the museum is built, examining the depths of time and the future from this spot. The show brings together contemporary artists such as Tacita Dean and historical art, questions geology and archaeology, and sculpts the future Museum Ludwig together with the Berlin landscape architects from Atelier le balto. The project is the first demonstrably climate-neutral exhibition at the Museum Ludwig.

Roni Horn: Give Me Paradox or Give Me Death
March 23–August 11, 2024
Curator: Yilmaz Dziewior

Since the 1970s, Roni Horn (b. 1955) has created an oeuvre that eludes classification. Embracing photography, drawing, artist books, sculpture, and installations, her work is abstract, figurative, and documentary. This openness with respect to art reflects a central idea in Horn’s work: everything in the world is subject to change and might take on various conditions and meanings. The exhibition at the Museum Ludwig examines this idea focusing on three subjects from her work: nature, identity, and language. The artist finds a key to the world in literature and poetry, including poems by Emily Dickinson. Horn’s image of nature is not romantic; she depicts it as both threatening and threatened. In photographic series and self-portraits from various periods of her life, she examines her own identity while addressing an overriding purpose that affects everyone: finding one’s own place in the world, regardless of social norms and beliefs.

Fluxus and Beyond: Ursula Burghardt, Benjamin Patterson
October 12, 2024–February 9, 2025
Curator: Barbara Engelbach

The art of the Fluxus movement caught on in the 1960s through Happenings, concerts, performances, and spontaneous actions, greatly influencing subsequent artists. While the Museum Ludwig collection contains pieces by Nam June Paik, Daniel Spoerri, and Mary Bauermeister that are now considered true classics, the works of sculptor Ursula Burghardt (1928-2008) and composer Benjamin Patterson (1934-2016), who were both part of the Fluxus circle, are less known. This major exhibition at the Museum Ludwig takes a meeting between Burghardt and Patterson in Cologne in 1960 as a starting point to further examine their work and the complex artistic networks and collaborations in which both participated. The breaks in their careers, which came about due to artistic and social reasons, are particularly striking. The experience of exclusion, that both experienced due to their biographies—Burghardt was Jewish, Patterson an African-American—is inscribed in their works.

2024 Wolfgang Hahn Prize: Anna Boghiguian
November 8, 2024–March 30, 2025
Curator: Yilmaz Dziewior

Anna Boghiguian receives the 30th Wolfgang Hahn Prize from the Gesellschaft für Moderne Kunst am Museum Ludwig. Boghiguian creates poetic figurative murals, sculptures, drawings, and spectacularly large installations that occupy space like a puppet theater. Her art celebrates a globally united humanity from a personal narrative perspective.

Presentations in the Photography Room

Chargesheimer
April 27–November 10, 2024
Curator: Barbara Engelbach

On May 19, 2024, Cologne photographer Karl Heinz Hargesheimer (1924-1971) would have turned 100 years old. On this occasion, the Museum Ludwig is showing a selection of his photographs in the photography room. The presentation focuses on the 1950s and also includes his lesser-known sculptures and abstract “light graphics”.

Seescapes: Alfred Ehrhardt and Elfriede Stegemeyer
November 30, 2024–April 27, 2025
Curator: Miriam Szwast

In a double presentation, the Museum Ludwig is showing newly acquired photographs by Elfriede Stegemeyer (1908-1988) in dialogue with photographs by Alfred Ehrhardt (1901-1984).

Schultze Projects

Schultze Projects #4—Kresiah Mukwazhi
September 20, 2024–August 22, 2027
Curator: Yilmaz Dziewior

Every two to three years, the Museum Ludwig invite an artist to redesign the largest wall in the museum, the front wall in the main stairway. For this task in the Schultze Projects series, artist Kresiah Mukwazhi (b. 1992 in Harare, Zimbabwe) will create a new work. Mukwazhi frequently works with scraps of used clothing or cloth that she sews together and then paints with scenes of patriarchal violence against women in her home country. For her, art is a form of protest, self-empowerment, and a starting point for healing. The Schultze Projects series honors Informel painter Bernard Schultze and his partner, Ursula Schultze-Bluhm.

Director Yilmaz Dziewior: “Art is a very special experience; unlike politics or social interactions, many experiences can only be had through art. Such an experience can also have sociopolitical meaning because it not only informs viewers; it can hopefully also fortify them with information. In this way, art can serve as a model, and it can be a starting point for action.“