Color and Content – The New Presentation of Kunstmuseum Bonn’s Collection

Kunstmuseum Bonn possesses a highly specific collection of German art with a focus on painting after 1945 and displays selected ensembles of its outstanding representatives. Due to a number of new private collectors the museum was recently able to win, the collection’s strength can now be used even more effectively.

COLOR AND CONTENT, the second new presentation of the collection, continues what the museum started with COLLECTION – RELOADED in 2009: presenting a combination of the highlights of the collection’s municipal core and new acquisitions by friends of the museum and the museum itself as well as outstanding loans from the private collections of Ute and Rudolf Scharpff, “Mondstudio” (Adrian Koerfer) and “Sammlung KiCo”, which are all closely connected to the museum. Compared to last year’s strong focus on painting, this year, the museum puts more emphasis on new media like photography, film and video (Jörg Sasse, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Demand, Julian Rosefeldt),  without neglecting to discuss the development of painting (Pia Fries, Albert Oehlen, Herbert Brandl). In addition, important moments of the historical development of the Federal Republic of Germany are reflected by the accentuated placement of certain artworks. For instance, Andreas Gursky’s Bundestag meets Thomas Demand’s photographic work Parlament which shows a detail of Bonn’s former plenary hall. Our historic “foundation” consisting of August Macke and the Rhenish Expressionists is complemented by works of Macke’s only master student Paul Adolf Seehaus and selected loans from Bremer Kunsthalle’s Noble Guests.