Museum Folkwang presents its exhibition programme 2023

In 2023, the Museum Folkwang’s entire exhibition program will center on the Folkwang concept of “Kunst für alle” (Art for all). Three major exhibitions focus on subjects such as digital art presentation and accessibility, art dissemination in the form of artists’ books and editions for a wider audience, and societal aspirations for a new way of living together. In addition, four other shows featuring works from the Photography Collection fill out the schedule.

The American painter Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) retrospective—Painterly Constellations (December 2, 2022-March 5, 2023) ushers Museum Folkwang into the new year. The museum will showcase new artistic positions in the digital space in the spring: Rozendaal, Rafael Color, Code, Communication (April 21-August 20, 2023) is an NFT artist’s first big monographic exhibition in a European institution. The artist is well-known in the field of digital art. As early as the early 2000s, Rozendaal created, showed, and sold artworks on websites. He now mostly uses NFTs to distribute his art through digital venues (blockchains). Physically, his art can be experienced as immersive spatial installations, wall paintings, and video installations. His works depict transition processes that exemplify today’s digital world. Rozendaal investigates the extent to which art may be democratised through digital mediation and distribution in his artists’ book Home Alone (2019) and the current NFT series Homage (2022), Doors (2022), and Cabinets (2022), some of which have yet to be published. The show will be followed by a two-day conference on the viewpoint of NFTs and digital art in the museum environment (April 22-23, 2023).

The exhibition Chagall, Matisse, Miró will feature great graphic works in late summer. Made in France (September 1, 2023–January 7, 2024). The show begins in Paris, the European center of printmaking circa 1900, and continues to the present day. Made in Paris exhibits original graphic works, editions, and artists’ books by artists such as Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, and Pablo Picasso, as well as how well-known Parisian printing workshops contributed to the dissemination of motifs and the international reputation of their creators to this day. The show comprises notable works from the museum’s own collection as well as international loans, including Jazz by Henri Matisse, La Tauromaquia by Pablo Picasso, A toute épreuve by Joan Miró, and Marc Chagall’s etchings based on the Hebrew Bible. Visitors can also get a look behind the scenes of art production and distribution.

The exhibition NEW COMMUNITIES (November 24, 2023-March 17, 2024) will present ideas and designs for new ways of living together towards the end of the year. In this framework, the show will bring together works from the domains of art, design, and architecture from the last 120 years. The play opens around 1900, with the Lebensreform movement and its ideas for a new way of living together that goes beyond characteristics of industrialisation and expanding urbanisation. Wenzel Hablik and Bruno Taut’s crystalline architectural designs embody positions from the 1920s. Other chapters look at Constant’s New Babylon project and the concept of homo ludens (or playful man), Hippie Modernism in the 1960s and 1980s, and Afrofuturism. The show, in particular, focuses on modern perspectives on our present and future. All of these artistic utopias have a vision of life in balance with nature, based on notions of equality, peace, and harmony, as well as the settlement of other locations and the application of cutting-edge technology. A comprehensive companion program allows museum visitors to immediately reflect on and discuss current issues concerning their own way of life.

The Museum Folkwang Collection display will continue in 2023 under the title NEW WORLDS, with new thematic rooms mixing work from different ages as well as other mediums in the spirit of the Folkwang notion. The arrangement of paintings and editions by Gerhard Richter from the Olbricht Collection surrounding the architectural walk-in installation Helm/Helmet/Yelmo by the Cuban artist team Los Carpinteros is a particular feature from December 2022 to April 2023. Admission to the collection is always free for the general public.