Musea en Erfgoed Antwerpen

Hessenhuis – Falconrui 53, 2000 Antwerpen

News release 16 | 08 | 10 Antwerp City Museums, KMSKA and M HKA join forces i n the first exhibition in Antwerp of monumental works by Anselm Kiefer.

In the autumn, the Antwerp City Museums, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA) and

the Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp (M HKA) are joining forces to bring a notable exhibition

to the city. From 23 October, the temporarily vacat ed KMSKA building will house a show of

selected works by contemporary artist Anselm Kiefer . The initiative is the second collaboration

between the three partners, following last year’s h ighly successful exhibition in Shanghai and

Singapore entitled ‘A Story of the Image’. Further joint shows of work by influential 20th-century

artists are being planned.

This autumn, three major museum partners – Antwerp City Museums1, KMSKA and M HKA – are joining

forces to organise a unique exhibition of work by the prominent contemporary German artist Anselm Kiefer

(°1945).

This is the first major Anselm Kiefer exhibition to be staged in Antwerp. It showcases selected works from

1980 to the present day. The pieces on display are part of the collection of the Grothe family, who have

been passionately collecting German contemporary art since the 1970s. The selection is by curator Walter

Smerling, the president of Stiftung für Kunst und Kultur in Bonn, Germany.

The work shown is representative of some of Kiefer’s most familiar themes, including memories of German

history, the Holocaust and other devastating consequences of the Second World War.

According to art critic and essayist Paul Depondt, Kiefer’s approach to history focuses not on ‘facts’ or

‘trivia’, but rather on ‘atmosphere’, thereby creating a realm of reflection and emotion that at once evokes

the great myths and the recent past. He regards Kiefer as the archivist of war-stricken landscapes.2

1 Antwerp City Museums is a conglomerate of all municipal museums of the City of Antwerp. It includes Museum Plantin-Moretus | Print Room, Middelheim Museum, MAS | Museum aan de Stroom, Red Star Line Museum, House of Literature, Museum Mayer van den Bergh, and the Rubens House.

Musea en Erfgoed Antwerpen

Hessenhuis – Falconrui 53, 2000 Antwerpen

Kiefer is a teller of stories. His work is a visual Gesamtkunstwerk, an epic and poetic total experience. His

compositions are ‘arranged’ theatrical spaces for histories to unfold.2

Each of these grand creations is characteristic of the artistic language of Kiefer. Using basic materials such

as ash, earth, iron and wood, he breathes life into the historical memory.

Throughout his oeuvre, Kiefer uses symbolically loaded imagery: the fire of creation and destruction, the

labyrinthine forest, the water of the Flood and the origin of life, the earth that brings forth and takes back.

He is an alchemist and mythographer who literally moulds the ancient epos into compositions of lead and

paint.2

But the exhibition also features work that reveals Kiefer’s keen interest in religion, mythology and literature.

As the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp is preparing for major renovation work and is temporarily

suspending the display of its permanent collection, the vacated museum building provides the ideal setting

for this exhibition of Kiefer’s monumental work, which opens on 23 October 2010.

Last year, Antwerp City Museums, KMSKA and M HKA jointly organised an exhibition in Shanghai and

Singapore entitled ‘A Story of the Image’. It was the start of a structural partnership that allows the

museums to explore synergies between their respective exhibition programmes and to develop a joint

communication strategy. By joining forces in this way, they are able to fill lacunas in the current exhibition

offering and present shows in Antwerp that would be difficult or impossible to stage by any one of the

partners individually. Thanks to this novel approach, exhibitions that the Flemish public could previously

only admire abroad will soon be on display in Antwerp.

The next joint projects will take place in the spring of 2011. The empty KMSKA building will then provide a

fitting backdrop for an exhibition entitled ‘Museums of the 21st Century: Concepts, Projects, Buildings’. The

three partners will also join forces in the inaugural temporary exhibition at the brand-new MAS (Museum

aan de Stroom), which will feature some seventy paintings from the KMSKA collections as well as

showpieces from M HKA and the Print Room of Museum Plantijn-Moretus.

2 See the accompanying text by journalist, critic and essayist Paul Depondt.

Musea en Erfgoed Antwerpen

Hessenhuis – Falconrui 53, 2000 Antwerpen

Practical information Anselm Kiefer

• from 23 October 2010 to 23 January 2011 • open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 10am to 5pm and on Sundays from 10am to 6pm • closed on Mondays and on 25 December 2010 as well as 1 and 2 January 2011

• location:

KMSKA Leopold De Waelplaats, 2000 Antwerp

• info : musea@stad.antwerpen.be www.antwerpen.be/musea

• rates: • € 6 • € 4: residents of Antwerp, students, groups of 15+ persons • € 1: 19-25 years • € 0: under-19s and over-65s, city guides, disabled persons and carers, school groups

accompanied by teachers, VMV and ICOM members, holders of Klasse teacher or student pass, unemployed persons, Friends of KMSKA, M HKA or Antwerp City Museums

• The admission fee covers the Anselm Kiefer exhibiti on only. The permanent collection of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp is not access ible during the renovation work.

• Guided visits:

• max. 20 persons • € 70 (€ 50 for school groups) • duration: 90 minutes • reservations: tel. 03 242 04 16 of publiekswerking@kmska.be

• curator: Walter Smerling, Director of MKM Museum Küppersmühle, Duisburg • in collaboration with: ‘Die Stiftung für Kunst und Kultur e.V. Bonn’

Information for the press: Images are downloadable from the ftp server of the City of Antwerp https://pers.antwerpen.be (see map Anselm_Kiefer) Username: ftp_pers Password: 98BernersLee Please note: the link, username and password are intended for use by the news media only and may not be passed on to third parties. For further information, please contact: Nadine Plehiers, Persdienst Musea en Erfgoed Antwerpen tel +32 3 292 36 14, gsm +32 3 492 91 52 38, nadine.plehiers@stad.antwerpen.be