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| Museum Küppersmühle | |
|---|---|
| Name | Museum Küppersmühle |
| Native name | Sammlung Küppersmühle |
| Caption | Former grain mill on the Duisburg Hafen |
| Established | 1999 |
| Location | Duisburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany |
| Type | Contemporary art museum |
| Founder | Hans Grothe, Ströher family |
| Director | Hans Grothe (founder), later Manuel Borja-Villel (guest curators) |
| Architect | Herzog & de Meuron |
Museum Küppersmühle is a contemporary art museum located in a converted industrial complex on the Ruhr harbor in Duisburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The institution occupies a historic grain mill repurposed by the Swiss architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron and opened to the public in 1999 as part of cultural regeneration initiatives linked to the Ruhr region transformation. Its permanent collection emphasizes postwar and contemporary painting and sculpture with international holdings and site-specific commissions that place the museum within networks of Museum Kunstpalast, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou, and private collections across Europe.
The complex originated as the Küppersmühle grain mill owned by the industrialist Franz Küppersmühle family operating in the late 19th and early 20th centuries alongside the Duisburg Inner Harbour redevelopment and the expansion of the Krupp industrial conglomerate. After industrial decline linked to the wider deindustrialization of the Ruhrgebiet, the site fell into disuse until collectors including Hans Grothe and the Ströher family initiated adaptive reuse projects influenced by precedents at Dia Art Foundation, Walker Art Center, Carnegie Museum of Art, Hamburger Bahnhof, and the conversion of the Tate Modern power station. The conversion by Herzog & de Meuron established the building as a museum in 1999, coinciding with municipal cultural policy shifts similar to initiatives in Essen and Oberhausen. Over subsequent decades the museum hosted exhibitions curated in collaboration with curators from Stedelijk Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, and guest projects by artists represented by galleries such as Gagosian Gallery, Hauser & Wirth, and David Zwirner.
The architecture melds preserved industrial fabric with contemporary interventions by Herzog & de Meuron, echoing other adaptive projects like Zeche Zollverein and the Duisburg Landschaftspark. The complex comprises multiple silos and brick warehouses converted into exhibition halls, storage spaces, and offices, with structural work referencing techniques used at Elbphilharmonie and Philharmonie de Paris. The design features heavy masonry, raw concrete, and glazed linkages similar to projects at Kunsthaus Zürich and Fondation Beyeler, and incorporates climate-control systems meeting standards used by ICOM-affiliated institutions and conservation labs modeled after facilities at Rijksmuseum and British Museum. The site sits adjacent to the Duisburg Inner Harbour and is connected through pedestrian routes to cultural nodes such as Lehmbruck Museum and the Duisburg Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord.
The collection emphasizes postwar painting, minimal and conceptual works, and contemporary sculpture with notable artists represented including Gerhard Richter, Anselm Kiefer, Joseph Beuys, Sigmar Polke, Blinky Palermo, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin, Andreas Gursky, Imi Knoebel, Martin Kippenberger, Paul McCarthy, Bruce Nauman, Ellsworth Kelly, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, Brice Marden, Ellsworth Kelly, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Cy Twombly, Franz Erhard Walther, Rosemarie Trockel, Rebecca Horn, Wolfgang Tillmans, Mike Kelley, Richard Serra, Ai Weiwei, Anish Kapoor, Yayoi Kusama, Marina Abramović, Olafur Eliasson, Laurie Anderson, Pipilotti Rist, Thomas Struth, Andreas Slominski, Karin Sander, Katharina Fritsch, Jonathan Meese, Tacita Dean, Rosemarie Trockel, Gerwald Rockenschaub, Daniel Richter, Jannis Kounellis, Marta Minujín, Imogen Cunningham, Hilla Becher, Bernd Becher, Paul Thek, Lucio Fontana, Günther Uecker, Hermann Nitsch, Per Kirkeby, Marcel Broodthaers, Dieter Roth, John Cage, Nam June Paik, Joseph Kosuth, Marcel Duchamp, Piet Mondrian, Kazimir Malevich, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso). Temporary exhibitions have included thematic surveys and solo presentations organized with partners such as Kunsthalle Bern, Kunstverein Hamburg, S.M.A.K., Hayward Gallery, and touring collaborations with Bundeskunsthalle.
Curatorial programming has featured collaborations with curators and institutions like Nicholas Serota, Deyan Sudjic, Frances Morris, Okwui Enwezor, Manuel Borja-Villel, Suzanne Pagé, and curatorial offices at Fondazione Prada, Serpentine Galleries, New Museum, and K21 Ständehaus. The museum runs educational initiatives patterned on outreach models from Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Centre Pompidou Mobile, and the Smithsonian Institution, offering guided tours, workshops for school groups from HeinrichHeine-Schule, lecture series with academics from Ruhr University Bochum, University of Duisburg-Essen, and residency programs akin to those at Cité internationale des arts.
Conservation policies align with professional standards promoted by ICOM, ICOMOS, and laboratory practices comparable to those at the Getty Conservation Institute, Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Property and Rijksmuseum conservation studio. Research collaborations have been established with university departments at University of Cologne, Humboldt University of Berlin, and art history institutes such as Warburg Institute and Getty Research Institute to support provenance research, technical art history, and material science analyses including X-radiography and pigment studies used by institutions like Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The museum is accessible via regional transport connections including Duisburg Hauptbahnhof, local tram services operated by Rheinbahn, and regional routes connecting to Düsseldorf Airport and Cologne Bonn Airport. Visitor amenities follow standards established by major museums such as Louvre, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Vatican Museums, offering a bookstore, café, and guided tours in multiple languages, and participating in city-wide cultural events including Duisburg Festival, RUHR.2010 and cooperative programming with the European Capital of Culture initiatives. Opening hours, ticketing, and accessibility information are available on site and through municipal cultural offices.
Category:Art museums and galleries in Germany Category:Museums in North Rhine-Westphalia