Peter Gorschlüter, director of Museum Folkwang in Essen since 2018, is one of the youngest museum directors in Germany. Peter talks his early, formative years, growing up in a household with an affinity for culture. He talks his almost becoming a gallerist and how unexpectedly then the course was set to pursue a career as curator – and later director – of art institutions. He talks in depth about his working in different international art institutions through the years with a focus on developing an approach for Museum Folkwang that honors the history of the museum, as well as opens up new ways in corresponding with the time and the needs of the people. The demuseumization of the museum is an essential question for him and he would like to transfer the Folkwang (= hall of the people) vision of the museum founder Karl Ernst Osthaus into our times, thinking across genres and and epochs. Therefore he considers participation, transparency and putting people in the center of attention to be very important tasks. He sees himself not only as museum manager, but also as someone who intitiates content impulses.

Peter studied Theater, Film and Television Studies, also German Studies and Philosophy in Cologne. He started organizing exhibitions early on, worked at a gallery for contemporary art and then was invited to the post of curator and research assistant at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf. He spent some important years being chief curator of Tate Liverpool where he headed the Collection and Exhibitions Department. In 2010 he was co-curator of the Liverpool Biennial. After that he was appointed as deputy director of the Museum für Moderne Kunst MMK in Frankfurt a.M. from 2010 to 2018. Since 2018 he works as director of the internationally acclaimed Museum Folkwang in Essen. In 2021 Peter was awarded an honorary professorship for „Art and the Public“ at the Folkwang University of the Arts.

Photo credit: Peter Gorschlüter, Direktor Museum Folkwang, Foto: Tanja Lamers (BILD IM AUSSTELLUNGSKONTEXT)

Shownotes (mostly german):
https://www.museum-folkwang.de/en
https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/peter-gorschlueter-neuer-chef-des-folkwang-ein-museum-fuer-100.html
https://polis-magazin.com/2022/08/prof-peter-gorschlueter-besser-in-essen/
https://www1.wdr.de/mediathek/audio/wdr3/wdr3-mosaik/audio–jahre-folkwang—musemsdirektor-ueber-jubilaeumsausstellung-100.html
https://soundcloud.com/sparkasse-essen/zuhause-in-essen-8-peter-gorschluter
https://vanhornshowroom.com/viewingroom/podcast/

#VoicesOnArt #VanHornGallery #Podcast #PeterGorschlueter #MuseumFolkwang #Art #Talk #Storytelling

Dr. Magnus Resch is passionate about the economics of the art market. He studied at Harvard, the London School of Economics and the University of St. Gallen, holds a Ph.D. in economics and was awarded scholarships by both the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the Swiss National Foundation. He is Professor at Yale University and one of the world’s leading art market economists. He is also a bestselling book author and serial entrepreneur. Magnus published in Science, the world’s leading academic journal, and has written seven books on the art market, including three bestsellers. In this Episode Magnus talks his personal background and his take on buying art as a monetary investment vs. buying art as investment into ones emotional wellbeing vs. buying art to support a community of artists and galleries. His school days in Düsseldorf, which he spent opposite the world famous Kunstakademie, gave him the opportunity to meet a group of young art students that became his friends and later on well known artists themselves. Meeting these artists made him realize how hard it is to be successful as an artist and let him develop the ideas that led to his books, lectures and courses. He finds very clear words on what works – and what doesn’t – in an art market that includes (and excludes) many different players and how those different players have to develop their own strategies to achieve success. Articles, Podcasts and all information on Magnus on his website: www.magnusresch.com/ Instagram @magnusresch

The Museum and the City. Since 2004 Susanne Titz is director of Museum Abteiberg, the Museum of the City of Mönchengladbach, which is known internationally for it’s unique architecture and also the special collection it holds. Susanne talks her early fascination with art as experience, art as part of life. She talks in depth the role space and architecture play to exhibit and also understand art and the different approaches the Museum develops to reach it’s diverse audiences. The team of Museum Abteiberg creates multifaceted exhibition and educational formats and establishes deep connections to the civic community of the city, it’s people, the schools, the administration and politics etc. to ensure the Museums relevance for the society of the future. For her, contemporary art and the artists that create it are role models for young people to experience freedom of spirit, empowerment and building a hopeful future. The Museum therefore provides a space – physically as well as psychologically – in which these other visions of society and humanity can be experienced.

Recorded 22 August, 2022, 43 min., language english, Portrait photo Stefanie Genenger

Shownotes (mostly german):

https://museum-abteiberg.de/
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_Abteiberg
https://www.moenchengladbach.de/de/museum-abteiberg
https://www.hausderkunst.de/entdecken/videos/susanne-titz-die-phaenomenologie-des-machens-ein-aufruf-zur-emanzipation

#VoicesOnArt #VanHornGallery #Podcast #DanielaSteinfeld #SusanneTitz #MuseumAbteiberg

In February 2022 Kathleen Rahn, former Director of Kunstverein Hannover, takes on her new post as Director of the Museum Marta Herford. In our conversation Kathleen talks her background, coming from a family with deep interest in music and being taken to exhibitions early on in her life. Kathleen talks the different stages of her career in the arts, how important it was to meet artists during her studies in Kassel, what she learned from them and how she applies these learnings even to her exhibition making today. During her years as Curator and Director she regularly moved to different places, each place needing an adjusted approach to address cultural, architectural, geographical differences and also differences in mentality. She reflects on what is needed to run an art institution today to build a fruitful future and how important it is to include everybody involved – the artists, the team at the Museum and the regional as well as the international public and to still make space to having a private life and a family. Kathleen is deeply interested in communication and wants to bring people together.

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and on the website https://van-horn.net

Shownotes:

The new Museum Kathleen will be heading from today on
https://marta-herford.de/
The past seven years she was Director here
https://www.kunstverein-hannover.de/

Some earlier places
https://kunstvereinnuernberg.de/
https://kunstverein-duesseldorf.de/
http://www.neueraachenerkunstverein.de/

Coming from finance and with a deep rooted interest in the arts, politics, sociology, philosophy and the humanities, collector Alain Servais speaks his mind and does not hold back. He talks finding his own voice and becoming really good at something by having the right fractures. He found himself in art because it opened his mind to new dimensions and new kinds of people. Being exposed to other people’s view of the world greatly improved his vision of the world. Art for him is not contemplation or pleasure, art is having to make an effort, to work on oneself and pushing oneself to the limit – to feeling comfortable being uncomfortable. He is especially interested in contemporary art, young art, the art that needs to be preserved today because nobody understands or values it. By collecting it he is preserving a slice of humanity. Art changed his life and for him art is a way of living, not separated from life, politics and the larger society. Recorded September 30, 2021, 57 min., language english

For over 50 years, New York-based artist Judith Bernstein has created expressive drawings and paintings that boldly critique militarism and machismo in a manner that is at once humorous and threatening. Since graduating from Yale in 1967, Bernstein has developed a reputation as one of the most unwaveringly provocative artists of her generation. Steadfast in her cultural, political and social critique she surged into art world prominence in the early 1970s with her monumental charcoal drawings of penis-screw hybrids. In this Episode Judith talks the inspiration of men’s bathrooms, the glass ceiling women had to face in the artworld of the 60s and 70s, the founding of A.I.R. the first all women’s art gallery, her rage at injustice and her partcipating in activist groups like the Guerilla Girls. She talks her family background, her first exhibitions, the long years of being out in the water, her coming back and her upcoming exhibitions and she reveals that the strongest relationship in the world she has is with art.

This is a special Episode produced in collaboration with the Independent Art Fair, New York City. Vito Schnabel, art dealer, gallerist and curator, with gallery branches in New York City and St. Moritz, talks his early years and young adulthood, playing Basketball on the streets of New York City and visiting art exhibitions. He talks his insecurities and challenges and how those helped him to grow. He shares how the dialogue with his sister Lola, who is an artist, and her artist friends shaped his own understanding of art and highlights how important the support of his mother and her belief in him was. He relates how him being open, listening intently and evaluating what happened around him helped him finding his own language in the arts. Early on he started curating and met important artists like Ron Gorchov or the great René Ricard who became friends and mentors and whose expertise and wisdom he was soaking up and valued greatly. Vito talks friendship, his passion for painting and their capacity to be portals also in the 21st Century for anybody who wants to see. This years Independent Art Fair will be the first fair Vito is attending in his home town. There he will show new paintings by extraordinary painter Jorge Galindo in a solo-presentation.

There are as many ways to become a gallery owner as there are galleries. A perfect example of somebody who treaded a completely individual path is my current guest Grant Wahlquist, owner of the eponymous gallery for contemporary art in Portland, Maine since 2017.
Grant has a broad education and studied a variety of topics. He seriously learned to play classical piano for 15 years, holds degrees in Philosophy, Art and Religion and even attended the fuller theological seminary.
Grant is a doctor of law, he was an associate at a law firm and worked as a freelance attorney before he became an art critic and a curatorial assistant at the Orange County Museum of Art, where he worked on exhibitions by artists like i.e. Peter Saul and Mary Heilman.
Grant talks about his studies and inclinations as a young man, the opportunities and challenges of opening a gallery outside of the big commercial hubs, his fascination with mid-career artists and how to combine business with cultural and philosophical integrity.
It’s a pleasure to listen to his reflections and insights about art, the gallery business and living a good life.

In this talk, my guest is Haley Mellin, a painter and land conservationist. Haley founded „Art into Acres“, a non-profit initiative supporting artists and artworks in conserving large-scale landscapes for a positive impact on climate, biodiversity and irreplaceable ecosystems. She also founded conserve.org as a platform for people to be able to permanently conserve a single acre of land for the cost of a dinner out.
Her own painting practice happens „on the road“ while attending to conservation projects. She’s working with institutions like Hauser & Wirth, MOMA PS1, MOCA L.A., the Guggenheim and – very recently – the Kunstmuseum Bonn, to name just a few. A large part of her work is dedicated to supporting artists and smaller organisations like non-profits or galleries with their carbon footprints and how to reduce them.
Being an artist, she is the perfect intermediary between the land conservation organisations and the art world and entertains strong, trustful relations with the artists that donate their artworks and participants from the art community who are learning and looking into their carbon emissions through calculation and reduction approaches.
We discuss her upbringing and love for being outdoors, nurtured by her father, who held the view that „giving back is a large part of being alive.“ We talk about how she started painting and exhibiting at a young age and how art and conservation interlace in her life and practice. She shares her profound knowledge and deep insights into how art and conservation, both meant to last, go hand in hand.
This talk celebrates the 30th Episode of „Voices On Art,“ with Haley Mellin as a special guest and with a small „bonus track“: Haley unexpectedly started asking me questions herself.