Other People Think / Interieur as Idea / New and Old Friends

Other People Think—A Selection from the Wemhöner Collection
 Artists: Nevin Aladag, Georg Baselitz, Monica Bonvicini, Valérie Favre, Asta Gröting, Alfredo Jaar, Martha Jungwirth, Isaac Julien, Alicja Kwade, a.o.

With Other People Think—A Selection from the Wemhöner Collection, Marta Herford is presenting the first comprehensive exhibition of works from the art collection of family entrepreneur Heiner Wemhöner in his home town of Herford, which now numbers around 1,800 exhibits. The curatorial selection of the show in the Gehry Galleries includes sculptures, paintings, photographs as well as expansive video installations. It functions as a conceptual setting that focuses on themes such as identitary physicality, political approaches and the sensual experience of the works in the Marta architecture. Almost all of the selected artists already shape the institutional canon of contemporary art. The selection not only reflects a Eurocentric perspective, but also includes positions from Asia, where the entrepreneur has been active for decades.

With Other People Think, Marta Herford is launching this year’s exhibition program, which is dedicated to collecting art and the associated strategies and requirements. In this context, both the Marta Collection as the heart of the museum with two consecutive exhibitions and the practice of collecting in various contexts and forms will be brought into focus.

The exhibition takes a look at private art collecting and shows an exclusive selection from Heiner Wemhöner’s collection. The Herford-based family entrepreneur has been closely associated with Marta Herford since its foundation as a shareholder and Chairman of the Board of Marta Freunde & Förderer e.V.

The curatorial selection at Marta Herford takes up the media diversity of the collection and brings together 25 exemplary artistic positions that discuss themes that are as complex as they are sublimely related and focus on the personal encounter with the work as a poetic and sensual experience. The approximately 70 works reflect social, cultural and historical discourses and illustrate the potential of contemporary art to raise socially relevant questions. Spread over an area of 1200 square meters in the galleries designed by Frank Gehry and also extending into the museum’s outdoor area and the urban space, they reflect the complexity of contemporary forms of artistic expression and invite visitors to take in different perspectives.

Opening: April 11, 6–10pm, speeches start at 7pm

Interior as Idea—Works from the Marta Collection
 Artists: Art & Language, Sergey Bratkov, Bogomir Ecker, Fehling & Peiz, Rodney McMillian, Martha Rosler, Kaari Upson, a. o.

The exhibition collection on the subject of interior presents early acquisitions that recall furniture and address the theme of domestic design, including, for example, “seating objects” that reveal the thin line between art and design, form and function, experimental unique object and mass product. Other works from the collection open a perspective on furniture and fittings as objets trouvés or as symbolic relics of everyday culture, as a conceptual display of space or haunting film narratives.

The show draws an arc across the theme of dwelling and housing with levels of meaning between home, lifestyle and place of refuge – including psychological inscrutability and traumas.

Opening: May 7, 11am–10pm, free entry all day, opening speeches at 7:30pm

New and Old Friends—Acquisitions and Donations to the Marta Collection
 Artists: Robert Barta, Guillaume Bruère, Paolo Chiasera, Aaron van Erp, Tamara Grcic, Lena Henke, Rodney McMillian, Katja Novitskova, a.o.

Since its founding the Marta has built up a collection of contemporary art that now comprises around 500 works. Taking up from the ideas that originally led to the Museum Marta, the collection captivates with its installations and other artworks that open up spaces for and approaches to thinking in the area of tension between contemporary art, design and architecture. In the past three years, thanks to donations and a purchase, additional works have expanded the artistic positions represented in the collection. This is now being made evident for the first time.

Opening: July 11, 6–10pm, speeches start at 7pm

The Marta collection presentations are supported by the Kunststiftung NRW.