Connections to 200 Years of the Present. he Kunstverein and the Fictions of Sovereignty, Freedom and Nation

CONSTELLATION 1
March 22 - May 4, 2025

With works and editions by:
Daniel García Andújar, Ricardo Basbaum, Daniel Chodowiecki, Stan Douglas, Luise Duttenhofer, Till Gathmann, HAP Grieshaber, Christoph Irrgang, Vika Kirchenbauer, Ferdinand Kriwet, Muntadas, Suntag NOH, Anna Oppermann, Dan Perjovschi and many more

2027 marks the 200th anniversary of the founding of the Württembergischer Kunstverein (WKV). In the run-up to the bicentenary, the WKV is undertaking a two-year open process to examine three central ideas that are closely interwoven with the founding of German Kunstvereine (art associations) at the beginning of the nineteenth century from a contemporary perspective: the constitution of the (white, male) citizen as sovereign; the freedom of art; and nation building. The local particularities and concrete developments of the WKV will be considered in terms of their global entanglements. Linear time concepts will be questioned.

A series of exhibitions is planned that reflects within four constellations possible connections between past, present, and future. All four constellations are open arrangements between exhibition, archive and workshop. They are essentially characterized by viewing, searching, questioning, gaps, the unexpected, the preliminary and new questions.

The starting point of the first constellation is an initial selection of clusters of people, topics and questions with which the WKV opens its research trip. Founding members such as the merchant, bank director and self-proclaimed art dilettante Gottlob Heinrich Rapp, the publisher Johann Friedrich Cotta (also known as the “Bonaparte of the book trade”) and the lawyer August Friedrich Köstlin (Ulrike Meinhof's great-great-great-uncle) are examined. They stand for the newly emerging type of self-confident, educated and propertied citizen who climbed the social ladder by trading, holding political office and engaging in art and culture: a type that the artist Luise Duttenhofer ironically comments on in her papercuts.

At that time, artists were emancipating themselves from courtly patrons, although the new freedom of art was immediately accompanied by its restriction through censorship and its dependence on new groups of buyers. The function of the first Kunstvereine was to mediate between art, artists, and an art audience and art market that was only just emerging. A lottery system was central to this: members acquired shares, which were used to buy works by “patriotic” artists, and these were distributed among the members by lot.

Another focus of this first constellation concerns the question of the entanglements and continuities between colonialism, nationalism/national socialism and modernity –and how these are also reflected in the positions and protagonists of the WKV.

Alongside this critical look at the history of the WKV, the exhibition also highlights moments and attitudes of resistance. In their long history, Kunstvereine have been able to establish themselves as spaces for art much more strongly than municipal or state institutions: a role and responsibility that needs to be explored and negotiated again and again.