"Museums in the 21st Century: Concepts, Projects, Buildings"
2006-04-01 until 2006-06-25
K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen
Dusseldorf, , DE Germany

The museum seems to have assumed the role of urban landmark formerly fulfilled by the cathedral. Today, this institution serves as a symbol of cultural identificati- on in a society that is passing through an insecure phase, one caused not least by the steadily advancing progress of globalization. A spectacular museum building can enhance a city’s attractiveness, shifting a remote locale into public awareness through its striking presence, or else endowing a fallow industrial zone with a new function.

As the first station of an international tour, the K20 will be hosting an exhibition of museum architecture from the 1st decade of the 21st century. 26 projects from four continents offer a broad cross-section of the most interesting.and forward-looking contemporary museum buildings, all currently in planning, under construction, or already completed. On view will be projects that arrive at strikingly contrasting solutions through the deployment of decidedly individualized formal means: Frank O. Gehry’s expressive idiom, for example, is juxtaposed against the clarity and homogeneity of Tadao Ando’s architecture. 

Among the selected architects are Mario Botta, Stephan Braunfels, David Chipperfield, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Frank O. Gehry, Annette Gigon/Mike Guyer, Kisho Kurokawa, Daniel Libeskind and Jean Nouvel. All projects are documented through models, computer simulations, plans and sketches, as well as DVD installations.

IMAGE
Coop Himmelb(l)au.
Musée des Confluences,
Lyon, Frankreich, 2001–2008
© Coop Himmelb(l)au, Armin Hess, Rendering Isochrom, Wien.

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for Germany

Other Important Exhibitions in Germany