MUNICH.- Authentic cuckoo clocks from the Black Forest, plastic casts of gay couples on their wedding day, gaudily colorful high-heeled tchotchkes, miniature red Porsche 911s, a bright-yellow plastic duck, and a London telephone booth—these and a thousand other small objects are on display at the Lenbachhaus starting in May 2015. The Lenbachhaus also announced that Hans-Peter Feldman’s installation “Laden 1975–2015” has found a new home in their museum.

Two years after the Lenbachhaus reopened its doors to the public, the presentation of “Art after 1945” is undergoing a complete redesign; the new exhibition will be inaugurated on May 19, 2015. In the future, new selections of rarely-seen works from their extensive collections will be unveiled every two years.

In the centre of the new presentation is the sprawling installation “Laden 1975–2015” by the artist Hans-Peter Feldmann (b. 1941). Feldmann opened a store in central Düsseldorf in 1975, initially dealing mostly in antique technologies: nautical implements, photography equipment, geodesist’s tools, and vintage toys. In the 1980s, he added collectibles and souvenirs, including many articles that were not available anywhere else. The business did so well that Feldmann withdrew from the art world for a decade to devote all his energy to the shop. After forty years, Feldmann is now closing his store to transform the entire undertaking into a work of art that he has decided to entrust to the Lenbachhaus.

“Laden 1975–2015” ties in with the Lenbachhaus’s collection-building tradition in two ways. On the one hand, it is a new chapter in the history of environments and installation art in the Lenbachhaus, a history that begins with works by Joseph Beuys and also includes art by Anna Oppermann, Ilya Kabakov, and the room Gerhard Richter dedicated to Blinky Palermo. On the other hand, Feldmann’s work highlights an important trope: the artist’s private universe or encyclopedia, an anthology of objects or visual impressions of biographical significance. In this regard, Feldmann’s “Laden 1975–2015” adds to an important genre most prominently represented in the Lenbachhaus’s collection of contemporary art by Richter’s “Atlas.”

But the new presentation of art after 1945 also encompasses several other emphases: exemplary selections sketch the history of painting in Munich from the postwar years to the present, starting with the artist’s association SPUR, an important source of political as well as aesthetic ideas that influenced artists in Munich and internationally. The Lenbachhaus has a major ensemble of works by the group; also on display is art by SPUR’s contemporaries Jacqueline de Jong and Asger Jorn, who were active in Munich at the time and together with SPUR made the film „I got to have one of those [So ein Ding muss ich auch haben] (director: Albert Mertz), which lends its title to our presentation. The most recent history of painting in Munich is represented by positions such as Hedwig Eberle’s and Andy Hope 1930’s.

In the past few years, the museum has made significant new acquisitions, including recent conceptual pieces by Andrea Büttner as well as works by Charlotte Posenenske, two prominent additions to the Lenbachhaus’s portfolio of contemporary art. They are presented in dialogue with classics of American Concept art such as Robert Morris’s large-format felt piece, which has not been on public display in many years, and rooms devoted to Land art created in Munich that showcase a recent donation by Hannsjörg Voth as well as works Michael Heizer made during a stay in the city in the 1970s.

The new presentation thus also reflects the history of the Lenbachhaus’s collection: we have always sought to compile representative selections from the oeuvres of outstanding artists and introduce audiences to their art by showing cohesive ensembles of works. The museum also often features young artists in dialogue with older positions in order to draw connections among our holdings and chart possible avenues of creative engagement.

On occasion of the installation of the major set of works by members of SPUR, which has not been on view in a long time, the museum has dedicated the second volume of their Edition Lenbachhaus series to the group’s manifestos and programmatic writings, which were seminal to the evolution of art in late-1950s and early-1960s Munich. In addition to the German originals, the book includes the first English translations of these texts, which facilitate access to SPUR’s art for international audiences; their translators have taken great care to render the revolutionary verve of the originals.