KREFELD.- In the 2026 exhibition year at the Kunstmuseen Krefeld, the productive dialogue between art and craft takes center stage—from both historical and contemporary perspectives. While artist Acaye Kerunen examines traditional weaving techniques and their social underpinnings, Bernhard Fuchs documents agricultural practices and architectures through photography. Johan Thorn Prikker’s modernist ideal of the Gesamtkunstwerk—uniting painting, mosaic, stained glass, and architecture into a universal design—is juxtaposed with Emma Talbot’s vibrantly colored contemporary visual worlds rendered on painted silk. The applied arts of the Brücke artist group will be placed in dialogue with an exhibition curated by Slavs and Tatars, addressing the cultural significance of craft today.

Museum Director Katia Baudin explains: “The connection between the fine and applied arts is part of the Kunstmuseen Krefeld’s very DNA. This interdisciplinary mindset also provides the framework for our 2026 exhibitions: they demonstrate how closely artistic practices can be tied to craft techniques and materials, and how compellingly both historical and contemporary positions evolve at the intersection of art and design.”

HL HE Dialog: What Comes After Art
April 19–September 6, 2026

Acaye Kerunen and Bernhard Fuchs come from very different cultural backgrounds and artistic traditions, yet both share a deep connection to their places of origin—sources of inspiration that continue to shape their artistic visions. In both artists’ work, notions of preservation, appreciation, continuity, and the longing for repair form a shared conceptual framework.

Acaye Kerunen at Haus Lange

Acaye Kerunen’s practice (born 1981 in Kampala, Uganda) lies in her unique fusion of traditional natural materials and a collaborative, community-based approach to artmaking. Working with handwoven textiles created collectively by women in her home region, Kerunen develops sculptural and spatial installations that tell stories of craft traditions, social rituals, and structures of cooperation. Dance, song, and language are integral parts of these communities, which Kerunen connects to her works through performative actions.

At Haus Lange, the artist presents an immersive installation combining her sculptural works with newly developed performances. The Kunstmuseen Krefeld are proud to host her first institutional solo exhibition and first presentation in Germany.

Bernhard Fuchs at Haus Esters

Bernhard Fuchs (born 1971 in Haslach an der Mühl, Austria) is part of the established generation of the Düsseldorf School of Photography. With his series Heustocke (Haystacks), he has completed a new body of work shown almost entirely in Haus Esters. The series depicts the storage of hay on the floors of various barns in the artist’s native Upper Austria.

These haystacks, once common in rural life, are now increasingly disappearing. Through this series, Fuchs reflects not only on traditional agricultural processes of storing and producing materials, but also on the nature and temporality of photography itself.

The exhibition Bernhard Fuchs. Heustocke is organized in cooperation with the Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz (Austria), where it will be shown in 2027.
Curator: Sylvia Martin

Beautiful Anarchy. Johan Thorn Prikker and His Time
Kaiser Wilhelm Museum (KWM)
May 17, 2026–August 2027

Between socially engaged “artistic labor” and spiritual exploration, between ornament and abstraction, Johan Thorn Prikker (1868–1932) stands as one of the most influential artists of the 1910s and 1920s in the Rhineland. His vision united painting, applied arts, and architecture into a total work of art. Trained in the Netherlands, Thorn Prikker came to Krefeld in 1904 and later taught in Düsseldorf and Cologne.

The Kunstmuseen Krefeld hold the world’s most extensive collection of Thorn Prikker’s work—around one thousand pieces, including completed stained-glass windows, posters, paintings, and designs for textiles, murals, and mosaics. For the first time since the 1960s, this exceptional collection will be presented in a comprehensive exhibition situating the artist’s multifaceted oeuvre within the museum’s holdings. Highlights include monumental designs for mosaics and stained-glass windows created for the groundbreaking Düsseldorf exhibition GeSoLei (1926).

Collection Satellite #10: Emma Talbot
Kaiser Wilhelm Museum (KWM)
May 17, 2026–January 24, 2027

Since 2018, the Collection Satellite series has opened up new and unexpected perspectives on the Kunstmuseen Krefeld’s collection and history. For its tenth edition, British artist Emma Talbot (born 1969 in Stourbridge, UK) responds to one of the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum’s most significant monumental works: the mural cycle Ages of Life (Lebensalter) created by Johan Thorn Prikker in 1923.

With an expansive installation—set within a multi-layered, interwoven, unstable present—Talbot will present her vividly painted visions of the life cycle. Known for her expressive installations made of painted silk, sculptural ensembles, drawings, and film animations, Emma Talbot is the winner of the 8th Max Mara Art Prize for Women and participated in The Milk of Dreams at the Venice Biennale 2022.

Curator: Magdalena Holzhey

HL HE Dialog: Art × Craft (working title)
October 4, 2026–March 7, 2027

More than a century separates the creative output of the Brücke group and Slavs and Tatars, yet their practices share striking conceptual affinities. This dual exhibition explicitly invites visitors to reconsider the traditional boundaries between applied and fine art, challenging established narratives of art history and the present day.

Art. Craft. Brücke (working title), Haus Lange

The exhibition Art. Craft. Brücke focuses for the first time on the craft practices of the early 20th-century artist group Die Brücke. Beyond their expressionist paintings and prints, the Brücke artists actively engaged with craft-designed furniture, everyday objects, stationery, stained glass, jewelry, and textiles in pursuit of a holistic lifestyle where art and life were inseparable. Folk craftsmanship and non-European art served as key sources of inspiration.

The Kunstmuseen Krefeld present this exhibition at Haus Lange—the place where collector and industrialist Hermann Lange assembled his Expressionist collection in the 1920s. At the same time, the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum was among the first German museums to exhibit Expressionism, especially works by the Brücke artists.

Art. Craft. Brücke is organized by the Brücke-Museum Berlin in collaboration with the Kunstmuseen Krefeld.

Curator: Ann-Kathrin Hörlein

Slavs and Tatars: Handschuh, Haus Esters

In parallel, the internationally renowned artist collective Slavs and Tatars has been invited by the Kunstmuseen Krefeld to curate an exhibition at Haus Esters. Working at the intersection of language, politics, religion, and identity, the collective draws its narrative and visual material from the cultural diversity of “Eurasia.”

Together with a group of invited artists, Slavs and Tatars explore craft as a vessel of collective cultural and social meaning, reexamining the relationship between fine and applied art from a contemporary perspective. The “rivalries” they observe—between art and craft, innovation and tradition, individual and collective—form the guiding theme of their exhibition.

Curators: Slavs and Tatars

HL HE Dialog Series

Since 2017, the HL HE Dialog series has fostered encounters between historical and contemporary positions in art, design, and architecture within the neighboring Mies van der Rohe villas. Each edition reflects anew on the legacy of modernism, bringing past and present into dynamic conversation.