Exhibitions in 2016

HERE AND NOW at Museum Ludwig
Heimo Zobernig
February 20–May 22, 2016
Opening: Friday, February 19, 7pm
Curator: Yilmaz Dziewior
Curatorial assistant: Leonie Radine

In February 2016, the Museum Ludwig will launch a new exhibition series that questions the approaches and conventions of the institution’s own work. HERE AND NOW at Museum Ludwig aims to renegotiate the format of museum exhibitions. The exhibition series will be conceived in cooperation with international contributors who do not necessarily come from the visual arts.

The first exhibition in the series will feature the renowned Austrian artist Heimo Zobernig. Part of his radical and minimalistic—and in fact site-specific—installation in the Austrian pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale will now be shown at the Museum Ludwig. In rooms that were originally intended for works on paper, a replica of the pavilion installation will serve as both a stage and a pedestal for the museum’s sculpture collection.

Fernand Léger: Painting in Space
April 9–July 3, 2016
Opening: Friday, April 8, 7pm
Curator: Katia Baudin

With this exhibition in a landmark year for the museum—40 years after its founding and 30 years after the move to its current location—the Museum Ludwig is examining Fernand Léger’s exploration of painting in architecture and space. The starting point of the exhibition is the mural Les Plongeurs (The Divers) (1942), which the French artist conceived for the home of New York architect Wallace K. Harrison, and which Peter and Irene Ludwig acquired for the new museum building in Cologne 30 years ago. The exhibition will present the artist’s murals as well as his collaborative projects in architecture, dance, and film.

Huang Yong Ping
2016 Wolfgang Hahn Prize
April 13–August 28, 2016
Award ceremony and opening: Tuesday, April 12, 6:30pm

For the 22nd year in a row, the Gesellschaft für Moderne Kunst am Museum Ludwig will present the Wolfgang Hahn Prize. In 2016 the recipient will be the artist Huang Yong Ping, who was born in 1954 in China and has lived in Paris since 1989. With this prize, the Gesellschaft für Moderne Kunst recognizes the consistent quality of the recipients’ work. The association will acquire a key work for the collection of the Museum Ludwig.

We Call It Ludwig
The Museum Ludwig Is Turning 40!
August 27, 2016–January 8, 2017
Opening: Friday, August 26, 7pm
Curators: Stephan Diederich, Yilmaz Dziewior, Barbara Engelbach, Julia Friedrich, Miriam Halwani
Curatorial assistant: Leonie Radine

The group exhibition We Call It Ludwig is the high point of the landmark year 2016 at the Museum Ludwig, which marks three anniversaries: In 1946, Josef Haubrich donated his collection of modernist artworks to the city of Cologne and thus laid the foundation for the museum. After its founding in 1976, when Peter and Irene Ludwig agreed to donate 350 works of contemporary art, in 1986 the new museum building was opened.

The theme of this wide-ranging show is the institution itself. 25 international artists have been invited to develop new works for the exhibition that specifically relate to the Museum Ludwig.

Master of Beauty: Karl Schenker’s Glamorous Images
September 10–December 30, 2016
Opening: Friday, September 9, 7pm
Curator: Miriam Halwani

The Museum Ludwig is taking the acquisition of some 100 photographs by Karl Schenker (1886–1954) as an opportunity to rediscover this once well-established artist. As a photographer, illustrator, painter, and occasional designer of mannequins, Schenker devoted himself above all to the female portrait and to fashion photographs. From the 1910s on, he had his studio in Berlin, interrupted by several years in New York, before he had to emigrate to London in 1938. Schenker pictured silent movie stars, dancers, musicians and the high society. He used his mastery of retouching and staging to transform his models into the glamorous figures whose images they wished to represent. To rediscover Karl Schenker is to encounter a photographer whose pictures widely circulated and were then unjustly forgotten.

HERE AND NOW at Museum Ludwig
Home Visit
October 8–November 27, 2016
Opening: Saturday, October 8
Curator: Leonie Radine

This autumn the exhibition series will continue with a second unconventional format, in which art will find its way into private apartments and houses throughout the city. Instead of being confined to the hermetic space of the museum, works by selected artists will make a Home Visit. Under this title, six individuals from the cultural landscape in Cologne, such as authors, musicians, actors, or collectors, will open up their homes on one of three Saturdays to show works ranging from performance to video, painting, sculpture, and installations.

Contact:
Anne Niermann and Sonja Hempel
Press and Public Relations
T +49 (0)221 221 23491 / niermann [​at​] museum-ludwig.de
T +49 (0)221 221 23003 / hempel [​at​] museum-ludwig.de