Museum Ludwig

As an ex­hi­bi­tion or­ganiz­er, co­foun­der of Skulp­tur Pro­jekte Mün­ster, cu­ra­tor of the ma­jor ex­hi­bi­tions West­kunst and von hi­er aus as well as Man­i­fes­ta in St. Peters­burg, Kasper König played an in­com­para­ble role in shap­ing art dis­course over the past five de­cades. He was di­rec­tor of the Mu­se­um Lud­wig for twelve years (2000–12). In his view, a mu­se­um is a public place: “It be­longs to ev­ery­one and no one.”

König is now do­nat­ing a se­lec­tion of works from his pri­vate col­lec­tion to the Mu­se­um Lud­wig, which will be pre­sent­ed in one room within the mu­se­um’s per­ma­nent col­lec­tion. Al­though he nev­er saw him­self as a tra­di­tio­n­al col­lec­tor, over the de­cades, spon­ta­neous purchas­es, sou­venirs, and gifts have grown in­to a very per­so­n­al col­lec­tion. The con­cep­tu­al meets off­beat hu­mor, and ma­jor names meet un­knowns. There are traces of a (pro­fes­sio­n­al) bi­og­ra­phy that attest to a great open­ness, cu­rios­i­ty, and a par­tic­u­lar at­ti­tude to­ward art.

In close con­sul­ta­tion with the mu­se­um, König se­lect­ed some fif­ty works for his do­na­tion. Th­ese in­clude im­por­tant con­cep­tu­al works that have a spe­cial con­nec­tion to the mu­se­um’s col­lec­tion or com­ple­ment it par­tic­u­lar­ly well. König has en­trust­ed th­ese works, some of which were per­so­n­al­ly ded­i­cat­ed to him, to the Mu­se­um Lud­wig, where they will now be­come part of the col­lec­tion, with the po­ten­tial to form count­less new con­nec­tions.

Af­ter all, as König says, “a mu­se­um is a stor­age space with show­rooms.” The Mu­se­um Lud­wig is de­light­ed to re­ceive this un­con­di­tio­n­al do­na­tion (König al­ways re­fused con­di­tions) and hopes that many others will fol­low his ex­am­ple.

The do­na­tion in­cludes paint­ings, sculp­tures, works on pa­per, mul­ti­ples, and ob­jects by Clau­dio Abate, Paweł Al­thamer, Richard Artsch­wa­ger, Bern­hard Jo­hannes und An­na Blume, Jo­nathan Bo­rof­sky, Stan­ley Brouwn, Gün­ter Brus, Hanne Dar­boven, Jere­my Deller, Maria Eich­horn, Ayşe Erk­men, Katha­ri­na Fritsch, Isa Gen­zken, Jef Geys, Dan Gra­ham, Tue Green­fort, Tho­mas Hirsch­horn, Jen­ny Holz­er und Peter Nadin, Bethan Huws, Do­n­ald Judd, On Kawara, Ed­ward Kien­holz, Mark Leck­ey, Richard Long, Al­lan Mc­Col­lum, Meus­er, John Miller, Hen­rik Ole­sen, To­mas Sch­mit, Robert Smith­son, Elaine Sturte­vant, Robert Watts, An­nette Wehr­mann und H. C. West­er­mann.

Cu­ra­tor: Stephan Died­erich