OTTERLO.- The Kröller-Müller Museum is showing the exhibition Nature, space and time – recent acquisitions. The museum is very proud to have been able to enrich its collection with works by Lara Almarcegui, Gerard Byrne, Wessel Couzijn, Jan Dibbets, Willie Doherty, Stano Filko, Mario Garcia Torres, Stephen Kaltenbach, On Kawara, Marta Pan, Jan van de Pavert, Robert Smithson, Simon Starling, Peter Struycken,Thomas Struth, Rob Sweere, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Ana Maria Tavares and Jeff Wall. The exhibition includes slide projections, photographs, video works, installations and works on paper. The majority of these new works have been acquired with the support of the BankGiro Lottery, the museum’s most important donor. The Mondriaan Foundation, the Rembrandt Association and its Titus Fonds have also made contributed substantial funds to enable these acquisitions.

In this exhibition, the focus is on the works of artists with various visions on time and space and their relationship with nature and history. By choosing these artists, some of whom are already represented in the collection with earlier works, the museum wishes to stress the value of nuance and all that is vulnerable.

In 1908, Helene Kröller-Müller made the first purchases for her collection. In 2008, the museum can look back on an uninterrupted history of collection lasting 100 years, with contemporary art setting the standard for the purchases as it has from the outset, even in the cases of ‘old’ art. It was never the intention to create a collection that is an encyclopaedic summary of ‘the’ development of ‘all’ modern art. Over time, a highly diversified collection has taken shape, giving a clear picture of the development of modern art and articulating several visions on realistic art; a number of the main movements in post-war art, such as Arte Povera, Minimal Art and Conceptual Art are well represented, and many individual artists take up crucial positions. The collection’s unique character is further enhanced by its interaction with the sculpture garden. The collection of the Kröller-Müller Museum is an attractive complex combining works from different eras into a coherent whole, without surrendering their origins in a specific Zeitgeist.