DUSSELDORF - CURIOUS CITY OF ART
Quirky Modern Art Museums of Dusseldorf
Most
all big cities have their museums. Art museums of world class collections
of classical art, post-modern art, Flemish and Impressionist.
Düsseldorf, the capital of Germany’s north Rhine certainly
has its share, over 100 art museums and exhibition spaces. The city
itself is a bit of an artwork in progress with its old town rebuilt
to an intimate comfortable old world style from the rubble of war,
its embrace of ultra-modern environmental “green” architecture
of office buildings with grass lawns on the roof and see-through solar
heated, the twisted reflective signature of Frank Gehry along its media
harbor. The city claims its territory in the world of contemporary
art through it Art Academy producing some internationally renowned
German artists, Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Jörg Immendorff
and photographers like Andreas Gursky or Candida Höfer, but two
of Düsseldorf’s Art Museums are at least as fascinating
for their spaces and experience and for their changing art exhibitions.KIT Kunst Im Tunnel
For
many years past, Dusseldorf was separated from the shore of the Rhine
by a busy thoroughfare which carried traffic along the river
by-passing the congested streets of downtown. The city changed that
eyesore by digging a tunnel to carry the cars and trucks out of site
along the river route, restoring the scenic view of the Germany’s
great river Rhine (see Dusseldorf
on the Rhine). During the long building
process, the tunnel space under construction was used as an art space
to ameliorate the upheaval, clutter and noise of heavy road work. Once
the tunnel was complete the idea of art in a concrete road tunnel held
a certain anarchistic artistic romance, so the Kunst Im Tunnel (KIT)
art space (Kunst means Art) was created. Contemporary art is displayed
in an underground space in the form of a concrete road tunnel, complete
with the sounds of cars passing somewhere beyond the gray aggregate
walls. 
The
art on display can be as curious and odd as the idea. Sit for an hour
in front of a movie frame which plays over and over contemplating
the meaning “is this art”, the darkish exhibit spaces partially
hidden behind black curtains like secrets in a cave. But what’s
the point of an unusual art space if it doesn’t question the
nature of art itself. Upstairs at ground level, the entrance to the
KIT Museum is only recognizable as a glass and steel café along
the bank of the river walk near Dusseldorf’s “Knee of
the Rhine” bridge (Rheinkniebrück), where the river makes
a wide sharp curve between the old town and the TV tower Rhine Turm (see Rhine Towers Dusseldorf).
The Café Curtiz offers a pleasant stop for a stroll along the
K21
A walk of a few streets from the Kunst Im Tunnel space, back into the
city along the approach to the bridge leads to the K21 Art Museum,
intended as one of a pair of contemporary art museums in Dusseldorf.
The K20 across town represents art of the 20th Century and the K21
art of the 21st. (The K20 is closed for some renovations until late
2009). The K21 is an anachronistic curiosity, post modern contemporary
and experimental art exhibited in a grand royal hall of the 19th Century
imperial age. The beautiful building of the K21 is as old world as
its collection is of the new, the stature of the rear entrance looking
out on a tree
lined park lake reflecting the nearby business offices. Inside is a
great open atrium rising up from stone columns to stark
plain walls through the several exhibit floors, but you know you’re
in another kind of art museum as an Electrolux fan swings as a pendulum
on a long wire from dome glass ceiling over the dark parquet floor. 
The art can range
from a giant mouse standing on a couch or foot protruding from a wall,
to a frozen figures in a room of packing
crates to the odd experience of walking down a hall to hear the sound
of a woman
moaning, uncertain if she’s making love or being murdered, you
follow a maze like corridor to a space the size of a closet where a
projector is throwing the image of a woman’s face having an
orgasm onto a pillow. Perhaps the most curious of all is with the
large number
of docents in nearly every space all watching you as you stare at
the art, as if waiting for you to run off with something, or perhaps
faint
from bewilderment - you get the sense that like a Twilight Zone episode
it is actually you who are the art and they the curious viewers.
The K21’s permanent collection is of international art dating from 1980 with its influences from the 60’s, photographic works by Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth and Jeff Wall, large works by Marcel Broodthaers und Nam June Paik, video art by Eija-Liisa Athila, sculptural work by Thomas Schütte.
K21 - Silent Revolution
Before the key works owned by the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen
go on view at the reopening K20, this presentation of selected
works in the K21 offers an engaging new encounter
with important artworks owned by the museum from April 10 to August
4, 2010
Admission
to each museum is about 4 Euro and they are closed on Mondays. Dusseldorf
Tourism offers the Dusseldorf Card which provides for entrance into
museums and city attractions for one price along with public transportation
if
you plan one or more days of visiting the city. © Bargain
Travel Europe
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KIT
K21
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See Also:
SCHLOSS BENRATH PALACE AND GARDENS
NEANDERTHAL
DISCOVERY MUSEUM
AIR
BERLIN - MORE FLIGHTS TO DUSSELDORF
DUSSELDORF'S KARNIVAL - FOOLISH SEASON
