Times and spaces

The Von der Heydt Museum is celebrating its 125th anniversary and has invited some special ‘guests’: the birthday table is set in the collection presentation ‘Times and spaces’, a tour featuring selected highlights from the collection of paintings and sculptures. It is organised into nine themed rooms, each dedicated to artistically significant places and periods. The itinerary takes visitors from the Netherlands or Flanders of the 16th and 17th centuries, through the development of Classical Modernism in France, via the Worpswede artists’ colony and German Expressionism, right up to the mid-20th century. Three contemporary female artists have accepted the invitation to the birthday celebrations: Annika Kahrs, Anna Oppermann and Ivana de Vivanco. Their works enter into a dynamic dialogue with the museum’s visitor favourites, opening up the renowned collection to contemporary themes and discourses.

By Annika Kahrs (b. 1984), the video work ‘La Banda’ from 2024 is on display. For this piece, Kahrs collaborated with the intergenerational orchestra Banda Musicale di Olevano Romano, whom she asked to march through the streets of the Italian town of Olevano and stage a kind of parade there. The work focuses on the group’s interaction and the coming together of different people. From an art-historical perspective, Olevano is a special place: situated some 50 kilometres east of Rome, it was discovered in the 19th century by the artist Joseph Anton Koch and became a magnet for several generations of artists. Not only is Koch represented in the Von der Heydt Museum’s collection, but Olevano itself appears as a subject on several occasions within the collection.

‘Mach Kleine Überschaubare Verkäufliche Objekte! ’ (‘Make Small, Manageable, Saleable Objects!’) is the title of the installation presented by Anna Oppermann (1940–1993). The artist developed it for a retrospective in Hamburg in 1984, recreating the window corner of her kitchen – including the kitchen door. Around 120 drawings, 11 canvases, 15 photographs and 76 prints come together to form a dense ensemble in which Oppermann took to heart the advice to create art that is easier to handle and thus more marketable. The large-scale work can therefore be understood as a subtle commentary on the art market and the self-promotion of artists. Oppermann also has a direct connection to Wuppertal: she was a professor at the University of Wuppertal from 1982 to 1990.

The Chilean-Peruvian artist Ivana de Vivanco (b. 1989) contributes the work ‘Refuge’ from the year 2025. It takes the form of a simple, walk-in house, with the four exterior walls painted in colourful, figurative styles and a series of photographs inside. ‘Refuge’ is the result of research trips to northern Chile, where copper and lithium mining has caused significant damage to the landscape.