GELSENKIRCHEN.- It’s birthday time for Gelsenkirchen’s art museum! On the 40th anniversary of the museum building, the institution presents its treasures in a new collection exhibition. Look what we have—all this is there for you to discover starting on September 15, 2024. From the inception of modernism in the early twentieth century to the European avant-garde of the post-war years, from outstanding holdings of kinetic art to the international movements of the present. Newly designed galleries now offer space to display stimulating juxtapositions of artistic highlights, freshly restored rediscoveries from the storage and notable works on loan.

The new collection display presents artistic perspectives from over 100 years of art on consistently topical themes: the image of the human subject and the question of gender relations are reflected as vividly as expressions of social transformation and issues concerning the future. Works of art from different periods are dynamically linked by shared narratives or formal correspondences. These are supplemented with selected exhibits from Gelsenkirchen’s natural history collection.

Diversity is what makes the museum’s collection so special: Impressionism, Expressionism, the reordering of reality in Abstract art and in the prolific imagination of Surrealism form resonant thematic threads. At the same time, the Kunstmuseum also houses one of the most comprehensive collections of Kinetic art in Germany, which for the first time is on public display in the central galleries on the top floor. With its multitude of regional references twinned with an international outlook, Kinetic art reflects the desire for change and transformation from the 1950s to the 1970s. Focusing on movement, this genre also offers a timeless intellectual reservoir for our mobile and networked present.

The Kinetic artists’ objective to create an interactive relationship between art and its audience was revolutionary. At the same time, this was also intended as an appeal for us to grasp our environment not as something fixed and immobile, but as changeable. Reflecting on this important impulse, all the works in the collection that are allowed or meant to be touched by visitors have now, for the first time, been assembled in a separate, colour-coded area.

Two outstanding loaned works by Rebecca Horn and Haegue Yang will now also represent current tendencies in Kinetic art. The works proffer an outlook onto the future direction of the collection, in which female voices have so far been underrepresented, as also have been developments in global art discourse.

The museum visit is rounded off by numerous new features accompanying the collection presentation such as visitor-friendly spots to relax and linger, as well as a variety of digital attractions.