PROFILE

The Bielefelder Kunstverein defines itself as a site with its programme oriented towards the development and production of contemporary art, as well as to avenues of current thinking. The goal of the Kunstverein is to contribute centrally to the city of Bielefeld’s cultural profile, to promote regional as well as international art production in the form of exhibitions and to highlight the social significance of art.

The exhibitions and the programme of events and art education centre on contemporary art and its history, in its entire material and medial spectrum. As an innovative institution, the Kunstverein also seeks as a matter of policy to present views and perspectives from people engaged in producing culture and knowledge in related disciplines. The programme of the Bielefelder Kunstverein aims at making art and its multiplicity of concerns accessible to the public and to create points of contact with everyday issues, which are meant to stimulate engagement with social and cultural questions of our day. The Kunstverein styles itself as an institution, which very much wishes to invite you into dialogue with our world of today.

The entire programme for the year 2009 bears the overall heading »Beyond Standards«, the concept as well as the programme is meant to encourage thinking about what governs the status quo in contemporary art and in the Society and about its location in the landscape of its local culture. Our intersecting perspectives of exhibitions, artistic contributions, theoretical statements and projects are aimed to see arising a system of interconnections, which will reach across disciplines to elucidate the current, innovative forms in patterns of fragmentation and recombination.

HISTORY

Founded in 1929 by a citizens’ initiative as the »Freundeskreis des Bielefelder Kunsthauses« , the Bielefelder Kunstverein is celebrating its 80th anniversary this year. Since 1984, the Kunstverein has been situated in the buildings of the quondam museum for cultural history, the Waldhof, a manor farm once belonging to local nobility, built in the style of the Weser renaissance and dating from the 16th century, making it one of the oldest buildings in the city. With ca. 1000 members, the Bielefelder Kunstverein is one of the most significant and substantial of such societies in Germany.