THE FORWARD-THINKING MUSEUM. A conversation with Susanne Pfeffer and Yilmaz Dziewior

The developments and topics of our time are also of interest to artists and museums. Two of the most prominent personalities in the German art world today are Susanne Pfeffer, Director of the Museum für Moderne Kunst MMK in Frankfurt, and Yilmaz Dziewior, Director of the Museum Ludwig in Cologne and curator of the German Pavilion at the next Biennale in Venice. Both stand for pursuing a resolute course towards the opening and renewal of the institution of the museum. In this interview, they present their museums and talk about societal diversity, antiracism, ecology and the seismographic sensitivity artists have for contemporary times.

Melanie Weidemuller: Ms Pfeffer, it’s interesting that, as an art historian, you wrote your Master’s thesis about a medieval topic, but then made a clear decision in your career to commit to contemporary art. In the meantime, you’ve curated some 70 exhibitions in this area, including widely acclaimed events such as “Inhuman” in Kassel, Anne Imhof at the 2017 Venice Biennale’s German Pavilion and the artist Cady Noland, with whom you launched your tenure in Frankfurt in 2018. How would you describe yourself as a creator of exhibitions? What has shaped you and led you to your own approach?

Susanne Pfeffer: I've always been interested in those things that are not immediately accessible, an idea I still find stimulating today. This is a reason why the medieval ages fascinated me, a time that is incorrectly very idealised and which is, in fact, highly contradictory. Another decisive factor motivating me is working with the artists, with artists who are still alive, which is usually the case in contemporary art. The lack of historical distance here makes evaluation more difficult, as well as, of course, more volatile and more interesting. Here, I mean that we really try to reflect the times we live in using art, as artists are extremely sensitive to changes and disruptions. I've also always been very fond of developing new productions together with artists, because I get to see and understand the work even better in the process. That could be a kind of basic prerequisite for my work.

You once ironically commented on media reports: First you were called a curator of paintings, then a film curator, then a curator for new technologies. What’s your take on that?

SP: I've never been particularly interested in external perception. The question of which exhibits you're doing on what topics is a matter of the times. If Cady Noland involved a lot about violence, that wasn't because I sat down and thought that violence would be a great topic. It's much more because we live in a time when violence is becoming increasingly evident in society. And artists are usually very close to the times. I myself didn't have an intensive encounter with new technologies until the topic became so evident in art. The exhibition you mentioned, “Inhuman”, was about conceiving the world beyond the human, with reference to the philosopher Jean-Frangois Lyotard and the leading minds of Speculative Realism, who coined the term in this sense. According to science, in terms of pure numbers, the world will someday implode and, in this exhibition, we tried to think about the world without people.

Let’s turn to you, Mr Dziewior: You have been very successful in your five years as head of the Museum Ludwig in Cologne. Your career also began in this city, as Cologne became an important centre of art discourse in the 1990s, in the age of institutional criticism. Artists were calling the museum as an institution into question, as did, for example, Andrea Fraser with her provocative performances, the scene surrounding the magazine “Texte zur Kunst” and the galleries Nagel and Buchholz. What were the most important influences here?

Yilmaz Dziewior: My socialisation in this specific environment in Cologne was highly formative for me. There was “Texte zur Kunst” as a means of publication you could identify with, artists like Andrea Fraser, Christian Philipp MQller and Renee Green. On top of that is the fact that I've always been interested in questions of cultural identity, including from my own personal experience. People often ask me about my Turkish heritage, often just because of my name. Self-attributions and external attributions are an important topic that I was already interested about in 1999, when I co-curated the exhibition “Kunstwelten im Dialog - Von Gauguin zur globalen Gegenwart” (“Art Worlds in Dialogue - From Gauguin to the Global Present”). My interest continued with artists like Bodys Isek Kingelez as the first presentation at the Hamburg Kunstverein (2001) and the Brazilian Cildo Meireles (2004). Just as Susanne Pfeffer says, I'm interested in the artistic oeuvre of a given position, then I react to the oeuvre. And we also have to be open to the question of why we're working with this artist, but not that one! There are interests, pre-existing characteristics and preferences, all of which bring us to certain positions. Of course, I'm no exception in this respect.

The collection is typically at the focus of museum work. What characterises the Museum Ludwig collection that you found when you became director and what strategies have you derived from it?

YD: To me, the central and essential element is the collection! And the team is just as important. Everyone looks specifically at the collection and finds different aspects - that's what makes working with the collection so exciting. One special thing about our museum I'd like to highlight is the fact that the collector duo Irene and Peter Ludwig already had an understanding of what is called “world art”. For example, the Ludwigs purchased the works of Chinese artists at a very early time, before
the Harald Szeemann Biennale in 1999, when these artists made their first major appearance in Europe. So a vision beyond European and North American art is anchored in the collection. This means that, together with a highly committed team, I can continue with what has always interested me, that is, expanding the horizon - in terms of both the collection and the exhibition programme. Today, this is taken pretty much for granted, but that was hardly the case when Peter and Irene Ludwig started, long before the ground-breaking “Docu- menta X” in 1997, led by Catherine David, and the “Doc- umenta” of Okwui Enwezor in 2002, both of which have made decisive contributions to expanding the discourse.

Ms Pfeffer, the Frankfurt MMK isn’t characterised quite as much by a strong collector personality like Peter Ludwig. What is the profile of the MMK collection and what has motivated you in your present position?

SP: My starting point was the fact that the MMK has actually always been a place for experimentation and hopefully still is today. It has featured very daring exhibitions under directors Jean-Christophe Am- mann, Udo Kittelmann and Susanne Gaensheimer. With about 5,000 pieces, it's a rather small, but specific and exquisite collection that's building on the former Stroher collection as well as the collection of gallerist Rolf Ricke. We have the world's largest On Kawara collection, the largest Thomas Bayrle collection, the archive of Peter Roehr, groups of works by Sturtevant, Rosemarie Trockel, Marlene Dumas - actually, the entirety of contemporary art since the 1960s is represented. Of course, there's a lot to suggest a Western point of view and discourse. It's also important to me to open up these perspectives to the greatest extent possible. The traditional canon is broken up at the same time, of course, as a new canon is created - there's no getting away from that. We'll be looking at this question of the canon in future exhibitions as well.

Is permanent self-reflection one of the core tasks faced by a museum today?

YD: I'd say absolutely! Thus, for example, in 2016, on the museum's 40th anniversary, we presented not only highlights of the collection, but also a very self-reflective and self-critical exhibition entitled “Wir nennen es ‘Ludwig'” (“We Call it ‘Ludwig'”). We invited 25 artists to address the question of what the museum is to them, what it was and what it could be, and we gave each of them a production budget for a new work. The result was a number of very interesting and surprising projects.

SP: Actually, we define what a museum is. What is a museum, what should it be, how do we approach this assignment? At the beginning, it feels like a great responsibility to continue maintaining a collection, of course with the motivation of making it interesting to future generations. I try to include artists in the collection who I think will have gained some importance in a couple of decades. We're lucky to have our sponsors, friends and partners, as well as foundations and government support, to provide us with a purchasing budget that also lets us place new accents on the collection.

To mark the beginning of your tenure at the MMK, you made a strong statement with the Cady Noland exhibition, triggering an equally lively debate. Was that an intentional move meant to raise the question of what a museum can possibly be?

SP: That wasn't the case at all in the first exhibition. I wanted to get to know the house first. Even though it is pretty obvious, people often underestimate the fact that not only the artists and the times, but also the spaces define what we show. To me, this building is also an organism. Most visitors spend more than two hours in the exhibition spaces without even noticing, because every room is different and the visitor is free to choose which path to follow through the building. The substantive reason was that Cady Noland was already represented in the collection, as part of the Ricke collection, and because I think she is important. In her works, Noland exposes the violence we encounter on a daily basis in scenarios of establishing spatial as well as ideological borders. In doing so, she reveals the - purported - neutrality of material and form. The apparently clear distinction between objects and subjects blurs. The viewer senses this, the persistent mutual interactions become directly perceivable.

You’re currently showing a retrospective on the Caribbean-born artist Frank Walter (1926-2009). What’s the background?

SP: Our collection only has a very small number of works that deal with post-colonial discourse. Actually, there are only two. I also see the museum as an intellectual and discursive platform on which we can position topics, and this is exactly what the Frank Walter exhibition does very explicitly. The societal context of his work is colonialism in the Caribbean, which is unfortunately not a very well-known topic here in Germany. Who here knows what it means to have been born in 1926 in the Caribbean, what it means to have come to Europe as a black man in the 1950s, to identify as a member of the British Commonwealth and then nevertheless to encounter marginalisation. Colonialism and racism are highly current topics that affect all of us. An exhibition like this then goes down in the history and the memory of the museum, that is, in the collection. This is the forward-thinking museum and not this backwards-looking model - to me, this is also museum work.

Mr. Dziewior, can you connect with your colleague’s programme?

YD: I've seen all the exhibitions so far at the MMK led by Susanne Pfeffer, and I was a fan of her work before that. When I was recently there to see Frank Walter, in Cologne, we were in the process of showing the exhibition “Mapping the Collection” and in “Dynamische Raume” (“Dynamic Spaces”), a project in partnership with the magazine “C& (Contemporary And)”. And there I saw quite a large number of tie-ins. To me, the phrase “decolonialisation of the museum” is also a process critical of racism, a process in which we and the museum team are involved, but where we are only at the very, very beginning. “Mapping the Collection” was a critical look at our own collection. This time, the focus was not so much on the American Pop Art that the Ludwig is known for. Instead, we focused on the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s in the USA, which are also reflected in the art. We focus on topics like indigenous autonomy, Black Power and feminism. What drives us as a team is, however, observation and realisation. It's not enough just to put on these exhibitions. And it's not enough to buy works intermittently. What is called for is a new structural mindset and that means really getting to the heart of the matter. What is the composition of the museum team in terms of national origin and gender? Is diversity really present at the museum itself? Changing this situation needs economic resources and time - this isn't something you can do alone. Such structural, far-reaching changes, which in my opinion German museums urgently need, only work when the museum has a whole range of people on board who help move the changes ahead. Our curator Miriam Swast is, for example, currently working with great dedication on ecological questions. In 2021, she'll also be curating the exhibition “Grüne Moderne” (“Green Moderns”), a part of our long-term strategy of becoming a “green museum”, an ecologyconscious institution. I think this is very important, as ecology is closely connected with general societal - that, is social and economic - issues.

Post-colonial and ecological topics pose a central challenge. Do you agree, Ms Pfeffer?

SP: Entirely. As early as 2018, we in the museum began to take a close look at our own racist tendencies with the exhibition “Weil ich nun mal hier lebe” (“Because I live here”). First, we concentrated on African-American artists and the USA. At the time, however, the trial involving the right-wing extremist terror group NSU was going on here in Germany and we quickly realised that we wanted to address the question of German racism and antisemitism in history and in the present day. But I also think that the concept of “decolonialisation” calls for more than topically relevant exhibitions. Our team is continuously educated on language usage and on structural racism. We concentrate on the conceptions of the so-called “alien”. This is also a part of our societal obligation as a museum. It begins within the museum itself, with the employee structure, and I agree that we won't manage the job alone. We should, however, take a very clear stance. Again, we define what a museum is. We're also free here, a museum is what we do. A museum is people!

Will museums actually look entirely different in 10 or 50 years?

By its very nature, an institution is something that always wants to preserve itself, which grows rusty with time. That's why I've always tried to work against institutions - pushing borders, daring to do new things. And this is what artists do in the first place - you could say breaking the rules is right at home in art. Just as much as I love the institution of the museum, because it is the foundation on which art is able to develop, to the same degree, I also have to fight against it as an institution.

YD: We completely agree here. I'd like to add, by the way, for the overall picture, that this point of view is hardly the rule at German museums, where, in part, a considerably more conservative mindset prevails.

What other museums, domestic or international, do you see as having a model character at the moment?

SP: With regard to decolonialisation, I have to say that Europe is lagging far behind. Of course, we're substantively much more free in our work and I think the European model of the museum is, on the whole, a good model. But structural changes, including intellectual debates, take place in the USA at a different level and are of a much more radical nature in their implementation. Museums here are a long way away from that.

From another angle, haven't some things changed very quickly in recent years when we consider how slow the historical march of time usually progresses? Ten years ago, nobody at all used the term “diversity” in Germany. Nobody would have called for locking up pictures in the archive because the depictions appeared sexist from today’s point of view, but sensitivities in this respect have risen tremendously.

YD: It's always a question of how high we raise our bar. We are still at the beginning of a debate about diversity and its various aspects. The last 10 years were more concerned with the equality of women and men, gender questions and sexual self-determination. In this context, there has been progress in Germany's museums, reaching all the way to the leadership functions. But as far as ethnic and especially social origins are concerned, there has hardly been any progress at all. In certain positions, for example with curators, almost all employees come from college-educated family backgrounds, at least from the middle class. We're just beginning to talk about ethnic origin and identity, but we've hardly begun to talk about social class!

We’ve said a lot about the need for change. The core assignments of a museum - collect, research, cultivate - remain fundamental, or would you see them being called into question as well?

YD: That's not even reality any more! Just take a close look today at the activities of a museum, including our museum. How much time do we really have to do research, to handle the discipline of art history, to work with publications, the depot? That's an idealised notion. We constantly have to reclaim and reassert the centrality of these activities.

SP: I've slowed down museum operations here from the very beginning, because it doesn't make sense to me to simply run off so many exhibitions one after the other. We do two exhibitions a year in the main building, which are often preceded by complex research and preparations. In fact, the aspect of research has been increasingly fading into the background in recent years. I spend a lot of time in archives and, in my opinion, this is naturally inherent in the role of the director. This constant acceleration we've been experiencing in recent times may well lead to a decrease in reflection, which is, of course, not entirely beneficial to our future. I also reject an economic mindset and the associated language in the field of museums. We are an academic institution and that is our mission!

Nevertheless, museums as a rule still fail to reach those classes that are non-academically inclined. Are changes in the way we cultivate art also necessary? How significant are they?

YD: Very necessary. We find that we reach not only more people but also different people when we intentionally reinforce the way we cultivate art. Last year, in an exhibition featuring the artist Nil Yalter, a pioneer in the area of societally engaged art, we took the cultivation programme to those parts of the city where the migrant communities live, and it worked very well. A different range of social groups also came to the museum. Right now, the exhibition on the Russian avant- garde is running, for which we're conducting a multiyear research project with international experts. We're presenting the results to visitors in an understandable form suitable for the layman. In this way, we acquaint them with an important task of our museum, archive research, as well as with the skill sets of the restoration specialist, and it's being very well received. I’d like to turn now to the Covid-19 pandemic, with its wide-reaching consequences, both in terms of personal experiences, but also with regard to a system that is suddenly revealing its vulnerability in this exceptional situation. The capitalist exploitation of nature and humanity seems to be drawing revenge; the unbridled mobility of the last 10 years, in particular of the international art activities, has for the time being been reined in. Everything points to change. Isn’t this situation also a great opportunity to rethink things, including art activities?

SP: The structures of society are becoming highly evident, even in their abysmal aspects. Recent months have shown us that the museum is important as a place, a real place, and that digital cultivation programmes clearly have their limitations. After all, the point is really for people to move their real bodies through real spaces filled with art. It has become clear to many people in the last few months that this is irreplaceable. And as far as travel is concerned, above and beyond ecological factors which are one of the most important challenges of the present, I'm also worried about localisation. Interaction with artists, colleagues, friends, including on an international basis is extremely important to me and neither telephone nor Skype and video conferences can really substitute for a personal meeting. Speech and thought take on a different form. I have a very strong suspicion that the actual consequences can hardly be assessed as yet. We're still much too much in the midst of things to give the matter complex thought.

YD: I think the positive thing is perhaps a certain free space, as well as the tenacity to keep on going in spite of all the obstacles. People ask about visitor statistics, but everyone knows they're not particularly high. As an institution, we're using this situation to move things forward that we were planning to do as it was: expanding digitalisation, working with the collection instead of with loaned pieces that have to be brought here from the other end of the Earth. Concentrating on our core business and putting on fewer but very well-considered exhibitions. The current crisis may well move our museums to make the necessary changes. This may be wishful thinking, but it's up to us to make this crisis work for us as well.

In closing, let’s get back to the exhibition programme. In December, the major show “WARHOL NOW” will open in Museum Ludwig. Of course, Andy Warhol promises to be a blockbuster, but the question is, can we find new aspects to an artist who is so world- famous and has been exhibited so many times?

YD: That's exactly what we want to do. The choice of Andy Warhol means we're presenting a prominent figure, but, at the same time, we take a specific look at this artist. We're interested in Warhol's association with and affinity to a diverse, queer subculture, as it is the essence of the current societal relevance of this oeuvre. This is represented, for example, by his works like the “Ladies and Gentleman” series of 1975. Warhol was born to a high religious Rusyn immigrant family, which is also reflected by his works, not only in the famous pictures “Crosses” and “Last Supper”. So we pose very specific questions about this highly complex work, otherwise, it would indeed be dull to show Andy Warhol in the year 2020.

Ms Pfeffer, I read in the exhibition text for the current Frank Walter retrospective: “There is no typical Frank Walter. His artistic spectrum is free and broad. His eye is his own.” That’s a beautiful description of his art. What exactly is Walter’s “own eye”?

SP: Walter's creativity had an incredible intensity, which is visible and palpable in his works. He was only free in art. Here, he was able to create his worlds with an astounding variety. His cosmological paintings have a transcendental emanation, his abstract works are systematic, his figurative paintings captivating in their individuality. His landscapes embody strength in clear abstractions, one could say. All of Walter's works have conspicuous clarity and directness. The concentration - these are small formats - opens up an undistorted access. When he was not busy painting, he wrote; when he was not writing, he made audio recordings. Only in his art was he free of the brutality of the standards and imputations that were constantly present outside of his artistic creation.

Professor SUSANNE PFEFFER (born 1973 in Hagen) is an art historian and curator and, since 2018, has been the head of the Museum für Moderne Kunst MMK in Frankfurt. Before that, she was the Artistic Director of the Künstlerhaus Bremen (2004 - 2006), lead curator at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin (2007 - 2012) and director of the Museum Fridericianum in Kassel (2013 - 2017). She has earned awards for, among other things, her exhibition “Kenneth Anger” in the MoMA PS1 in New York (International Association of Art Critics (AICA)), and the art magazine “ART” Curator's Prize for “Inhuman” (2016). In 2017, she won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale for best national pavilion with “Faust” by Anne Imhof. She holds a teaching post as Honorary Professor at the HFG Offenbach am Main.

The interview was conducted by MELANIE WEIDEMÜLLER. For 20 years, she has lived in Cologne where she is a cultural journalist and works for various print media and radio channels (Deutschlandfunk, WDR).

Dr YILMAZ DZIEWIOR (born 1964 in Bonn) is an art historian and curator and has been director of the Museum Ludwig in Cologne since 2015. Before that, he was, among other things, the director of the Kunstverein Hamburg (2001 - 2008), director of Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria (2009 - 2015) and worked as a freelance curator and publicist. At the same time, he taught as professor of art theory at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg. In May 2020, he was appointed curator of the German Pavilion at the upcoming Biennale in Venice. He is a recipient of the Mercurius Prize.