While the aristocrats based their power on the blood that flowed through their veins thanks to the “divine right” of kings, the emerging educated and propertied bourgeoisie of the 19th century needed other forms of legitimation and new identity-forming narratives. In addition to growing economic and political power, nation-building, based on the idea of civil birthright, played a central role. Culture and history provided the necessary narratives of a supposedly homogeneous community: an “imagined community,” as Benedict Anderson put it. In this context, the visual arts became a foil for national identity, individual freedom, and liberal markets. At the same time, national constructs are constructs of difference, based on the inventions of gender and race systematized in the 19th century. These constructs engender the “unresolved problems of civil society” just as much as they engender the violence of slavery and colonies. A central cultural instrument in the formation of European difference were the world's fairs.

Under the directorship of Uwe M. Schneede (1969–1973) and Tilman Osterwold (1973–1993), the WKV's program became politicized in the wake of the 1968 movements. The politically activist art of the so-called interwar modernism (Grosz, Heartfield), the problematic legacy of art from fascism, the “East-West conflict” or the emancipatory and aesthetic potential of revolutionary movements were discussed. As Osterwold emphasized in 1976: “Presenting the connections between cultural and political processes has been one of the main objectives of the Württembergischer Kunstverein's exhibition activities for many years.” With Andreas Jürgensen (2001–2003), institutional critique came to the fore. From 2005, the socio-political contexts of the arts were reflected from the perspectives of “non-Western,” feminist, and other critical practices. The history of the WKV since the 1960s shows that it has repeatedly taken a clear stand on current political grievances.

In its approach to 200 years of the present, the WKV seeks to disrupt linear conceptions of time and thinking through anachronistic modes of narration based on ruptures, digressions, gaps, and overlaps. The methods of a number of artists who have exhibited at WKV are one of the starting points and learning models: from Ferdinand Krivets spiral-shaped text-based works, to Ricardo Basbaum's deriving space diagram, to Anna Oppermann's ensemble art. In 1979, she said of her works: “What is not recognizable in the illustrations [of my works] is that not only different pictorial levels, levels of reality, forms of expression, and media are arranged together here, but also representations – visualized or articulated – of different states of consciousness, levels of consciousness, reference systems (evaluation spaces), meta-levels. In less pretentious, but less precise terms, one could say: There coexist the open and the closed, the unfinished and the finished, the irrational and the rational, the trivial and the elitist, the private and the general, the foolish and the brutal, the traditional and the progressive, the mysterious and the clear, the stupid and the clever, the kitschy and the sensual, the idyllic and the abstract, the theoretical (scientific).”

?The term “location” designates the spatial relationship between things – a constellation. The WKV is located in the center of a typical Central European city. Housed in a representative building itself, it is surrounded by a central square (Schlossplatz), institutions of state politics (state parliament, new castle), and high culture (opera, theater, art museum), symbols of power (jubilee column for King William I), as well as commerce (Königstraße), recreation (park), and spectacle (Schlossplatz, park). At the same time, these spaces are characterized by the use of diverse public spheres and economies, by political struggles, and by police control and racial profiling.

?“The finiteness of the individual human life refutes property as a constitutive principle of human coexistence with the same deadly certainty with which the finiteness of the globe refutes expansion as a principle of political action.” (Hannah Arendt, in: Elements and Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951)?

?(* 1898 in Hamburg, † 1969 in Stuttgart)?1946–1965: Managing Director and Curator of the WKV?Alice Widensohler was the first woman to head the WKV. She was hired as managing director and curator after the Second World War. In this role, she took over a pile of rubble, had to search for temporary exhibition spaces, and to organize the reconstruction of the Kunstverein’s building at Schellingstraße (1888–1913 seat of the WKV) and later at Schlossplatz. After the WKV moved into the new building at Schlossplatz in 1961 and the situation had stabilized, men took over the leadership again from 1965 to 2005. In the commemorative publication for the 150th anniversary of the WKV (1977), Widensohler's exhibition program is placed in the context of the belated nationwide embrace of modernism. This abbreviated account ignores the lasting impact that her program evidently had on the collections of the Staatsgalerie and Galerie der Stadt Stuttgart, today's Kunstmuseum.?The notes on the exhibition posters from 1946 and 1947 are interesting from a contemporary historical point of view: “Published with the permission of the Publications Control Branch, ICD, OMG Württemberg-Baden.” The ICD, Information Control Division, was a censorship department of the American occupation zone. OMG stands for Office of Military Government for Germany.