Research
The wealth of the epochs and genres as well as the museum’s own eventful history offer multifaceted scholarly and educational possibilities. These include conservational work as well as art historical projects dedicated specifically to groups of works in the collection as well as research into the provenance of the museum’s holdings.
Initial check on colonial contexts of the ethnographic holdings of the Kunstmuseen Krefeld
The ethnographic object holdings of the Kunstmuseen Krefeld - an initial check on colonial contexts
The collections of the Kunstmuseen Krefeld include a small number of so-called ethnographic objects of non-European origin, which presumably found their way to Krefeld between 1900 and 1930 in the context of European colonialism and German colonial history. Founded in 1897, the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum then pursued a collection and exhibition program that attributed particular importance to folk art. "Folk art," which included cultural products of African, Asian, and Oceanic societies, was intended to serve as a source of inspiration for local art and design production. Within this framework, several objects from Africa, South and East Asia, and Oceania were acquired, mainly through the art trade. Examples include the acquisition of textiles for the "Niederländische-Indischen Ausstellung" in 1906 and the purchase of ritual objects from the present-day Papua New Guinea region for the exhibition "Farbe," which was shown in 1928. Most of the ethnographic objects, a set of various basketry items, entered the museum's collection by acquiring the core holdings of the "Deutsches Museum für Kunst in Handel und Gewerbe" in the 1920s.
Between October 2022 and April 2023, these holdings, which have been insufficiently documented to date, will be finally recorded and catalogued in a project funded by the German Lost Art Foundation. Additionally, the social contexts in which the objects were created will be identified, and the circumstances of their appropriation will be investigated. The aim is to uncover the significance of colonial contexts for transforming textiles, basketry items, and ritual objects into museum and art objects. At the same time, the objects' role in the museum's history can be further determined. Ideally, the project will uncover chains of provenance that extend to appropriation in the country of origin and identify sensitive collection items. The ethnologist and historian Gesa Grimme, Berlin, has taken over the research.
The project results will be made available in a final report. Furthermore, the results will contribute to the "Sammlungssatelliten" presentation and publication series and the research project" Karl Ernst Osthaus und sein Deutsches Museum für Kunst in Handel und Gewerbe."
The German Museum of Art in Trade and Commerce
In 1923, an important collection of applied art was acquired for the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum: the “German Museum of Art in Trade and Commerce.” The extensive holdings comprise a sample collection of exemplary design, which was intended to educate the general public to good taste and at the same time ensure, in the spirit of a Gesamtkunstwerk, that the proclaimed new aesthetic found its way into everyday life. The important Hagen-based patron and collector Karl Ernst Osthaus had assembled the collection between 1909 and 1919 with the financial and ideational support of the Deutscher Werkbund. Alongside his Folkwang Museum, founded in 1902, the new project reflected even more innovatively and radically the spirit of a new age. After the death of Osthaus, the collection was purchased by the Krefeld Museum Society in 1923 and handed over to the city as a donation in 1928. In the eyes of Max Creutz, director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum at the time and a close friend of Osthaus, it perfectly complemented the innovative concept of the museum in Krefeld, which had been developed in the spirit of the reform movement.
The 100th anniversary of the acquisition is the occasion for a complete inventory of the collection of the German Museum of Art in Trade and Commerce and a renewed scholarly examination of the collection from a contemporary perspective. With its holdings of several thousand works, the German Museum is perhaps the very first collection of contemporary design. To this day, it forms the core of the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum’s collection in the field of applied art.
The collection, which fell into oblivion in the post-war period, was already partially catalogued and published in the 1980s and 1990s for the exhibition projects The West German Impulse and Beauty and Everyday Life. For the first time, the entire collection is now being inventoried, restored, photographed, and digitized. The previously uncatalogued works are primarily from the large holdings of so-called commercial prints, which—with advertisements, commercial letterheads, visiting cards and menus, typeface sample books, invitations, postcards, etc.—comprise a panorama of cultural history.
In the course of the cataloguing, the fragile stock of paper works will not only be restored and thus preserved for the future, but also archived in digitized form. The digitized copies will make it possible to sustainably preserve the findings for research and will be available for future study. They can also be used for modern knowledge transfer in the digital age.
The cataloguing also makes it possible to gain an overview of all the artistic personalities who Osthaus integrated into his German Museum of Art in Trade and Commerce. In addition to leading figures such as Peter Behrens, Henry van de Velde, Lucian Bernhard, Fritz H. Ehmcke, and Richard Riemerschmid, these also include almost forgotten artists who can be identified on the basis of the inventory as important protagonists of modernism: for example, Johannes Weidenmüller as the forefather of German advertising science, the Berlepsch student Maria La Roche, and Elisabeth Stephani-Hahn as a pioneer of shop window design, to name only a few. They and their colleagues created the foundations of the ideas of consumer culture, advertising, and marketing that are still valid to this day. The exhibition planned for November 2023 and the accompanying catalog will use the research results to shed light on the German Museum with its innovative impulses for contemporary collecting, museum, and mediation activities.
Wertheim department store, Berlin, 1896/1905
First construction phase, atrium
Photography, made by the Institute Dr. Franz Stoedtner
Kunstmuseen Krefeld
Pot, 1912
Silver, opals
Hagen silver manufacture, Hagen
Kunstmuseen Krefeld
AEG metal filament lamp/Zirka one watt per candle, 1907
Printer: Hollerbaum & Schmidt, Berlin
Color lithograph
Kunstmuseen Krefeld
Kaffee HAG, 1913
Printer: Hollerbaum & Schmidt, Berlin
Color lithograph
Kunstmuseen Krefeld
Provenance research Mondrian
Dr. Katja Terlau
Dr. Vanessa-Maria Voigt
The City of Krefeld owns four paintings by the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian (1872–1944): Tableau No. VII, Tableau No. X, Tableau No. XI (all 1925), and Composition IV (1926). They belong to the collection of the Kunstmuseen Krefeld. Descendants of the Mondrian heir Harry Holtzman have demanded the return of the artworks.
In order to clarify whether this claim is legally justified, the City of Krefeld commissioned the two provenance researchers Dr. Katja Terlau and Dr. Vanessa-Maria Voigt to examine the provenance of the paintings.
Between June 2018 and May 2019, the researchers traced the history of the paintings since the 1920s, evaluated archive material, and spoke with experts both in Germany and abroad. In the process, they did not come across any indications that the works could be unlawfully in the possession of the City of Krefeld.
The summary of the researchers' dossier explains the findings in detail.
