After more than four years of fruitless debates about the conceptual positioning of the Weserburg I Museum of Modern Art and the Weserburg as an art location with the museum, the Center for Artist’s Publications, and the GAK Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, it seems appropriate to continue the discussion platform How Art Develops the City, initiated by the GAK in 2013. Perhaps broadening the focus can provide impulses for the deadlocked negotiations? To look at the Bremen situation not only from a Bremen perspective, but to recognize it as a national, if not European phenomenon of our time and to analyze it? And to draw lessons for Bremen from there?
In view of increasingly tight budgets in the municipalities and a widespread definition of contemporary culture that measures success in terms of visitor numbers, demands events and has them assessed by management consultants, the field of activity of art institutions is changing more and more. The discussion platform in the GAK therefore addresses the following questions, among others: What characterizes institutional work with contemporary art in today’s world? What has brought the institutions into this situation? Can they improve it by their own efforts? What can or must cities, politics and cultural authorities learn from them and how can they support them meaningfully? Are there examples where this has already been done? What significance does contemporary culture have for a business location? And to what extent is the preservation of cultural values still an identity-forming element for a city today?
The panel will first explore these questions in a discussion between the participants Wiebke Hamm, Arie Hartog, Bettina Steinbrügge, Susanne Titz and Wolfgang Ullrich, moderated by Astrid Mania, before the discussion opens to the audience.
The event was recorded and published as video on vimeo Wie Kunst Stadt entwickelt.
A panel on the situation of contemporary art institutions with Wiebke Hamm (Vice-President of Bremen Chamber of Commerce), Arie Hartog (Director Gerhard-Marcks-Haus, Bremen), Bettina Steinbrügge (Director Kunstverein, Hamburg), Susanne Titz (Director Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach) and Wolfgang Ullrich (Art Scholar and Author, Leipzig)
Moderation: Astrid Mania (Art Critic, Berlin)