Like few other art event the documenta fifteen is dividing the public: A very critical, sometimes scandal-evoking media public is facing a public of visitors „on site“ in Kassel that is rather characterised by curiosity, openness and an exploratory mindset.

Commissioned and supported by the „Bürgerbündnis documenta fifteen“ (Citizens‘ Alliance documenta fifteen), this setup was incentive enough for the IKMW to give the visitors‘ and citizens‘ voices a possibility to express themselves through interviews, reports and essayistic text on a curated website.  In the course of the last weeks of documenta and in the months to come they will for the first time grow into a work-in.progress „citizens‘ book.

Hungarian-Chinese-German „Art Clinic“ opened in Budapest

On the weekend 13/14 May 2022 the „First Aid-Art Clinic” was opened in Budapest’s Bartok-Distrikt (11. District) as a part of the Budapest “Sprig Festival”. The art project was developed over the course of almost five months in a cooperation between the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) Beijing, the Eleven Blokk Art Foundation, Budapest, and the IKMW Berlin, a cooperation that was unconventional both organizationally and in the manner of curating. As a hybrid format with “distance curating”, diglog field research and a concrete physical realization in five real sites in Budapest, the “Art Clinic developed into a successful, very well frequented art event. At the same time it proved an exemplary creative model for international cooperation under times of the pandemic. There will be further projects of this kind in the constellation Budapest-Berlin-Beijing following this encouraging experiences and outcomes.

Building on the core idea that art heals the ten upcoming curators from China and Hungary developed a narration comprising five stations: „Show Your Wound“, „Land of Demons“, „Cross the Boarder, Ferryman“, „Wonderland Cythera“ and „Paradise: Arcadia“. A path from hurt toward eventual healing is represented and told with different artistic formats from Hungarian and Chinese artists.

The IKMW expands and enlarges its portfolio in the direction of academic training in the areas arts and media administration and cultural and media education. Academic training for young leaders from organizations in the arts and creative industries, summer schools for students, campus development and lecture programs are conceived and realized in cooperation with the National University of Mongolia in Ulan Bator and the Zeppelin Universität Friedrichshafen. The existing lecture obligations with the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing and the Popakademie Baden-Württemberg in Mannheim are continued, as well as the lectures of Klaus Siebenhaar as Professor at the Freie Universität Berlin.

For the new analog and digital training projects in the area of cultural and media education the IKMW enlarges its team with the internationally experienced project developer and manager Stephan Reischl. Together with Dipl. päd. Dagmar Boeck-Siebenhaar he will develop and lead this area. First programs are planned for autumn and winter 2021.

Impact study for EU-funded cooperation project REAL IN

IKMW will perform a mixed-method research project for the international ccoperation project REAL IN, with partners in Avignon, Barcelona, Hamburg, Milano und Marseille. The study will provide an analysis of the impact of new Extended Reality-applications in different art genres and creative industries sectors developed by interdisciplinary teams on visitors and users – together with a documentation of aesthetic, organisational/managerial and technologic success factors.

Online-seminar for future musicians and music business professionals

While public life gradually becomes possible again, Achim Müller has held his seminar „Audience Development“ for the course „Kulturmanagement“ of the Popakademie Baden-Württemberg in Mannhein online again on May 31 2021.

The one-day course provided basic concepts and relevant strategies of implementation both conceptually and in the form of own practical experience through group work on cases.  In dem eintägigen Intensivkurs wurden Basiskonzepte. Pedagogic instruments were thus transferred to the digital sphere in order to prepare for the challenges in music business despite the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Exhibition at Foundation Starke presents young Hungarian as first part of a bridge between Berlin and Budapest

Together with Dániel Ongjerth from the Eleven Blokk Foundation Budapest, Klaus Siebenhaar has realized the exhibition „Dreams come from the past, not from the future“, the first part of a long-term cooperation between Berlin and Budapest.

From August 30 to September 23 2018 the exhibition curated by Flóra Gadó showed young Hungarian art, addressing the tension between tradition and contemporaneity in very different positions and formats. The exhibition is looking at dreams and visions from the past to obtain a deeper understanding of the present and the future – und thereby impulses for the two European metropoles undergoing fundamental transitions.

As a second part of the cooperation there has been an international conference organized by the Night Mayor Budapest on September 27 2018, offering an exchange of experiences about development strategies at the intersection between club culture, creative industries and urban society.

The IKMW together with B&S Siebenhaar Verlag+Medien have set up their new headquarters in the affluent Grunewald. Through the combination the broad lounge and exhibition spaces of the Starke Foundation the new location also offers manifold possibilities for events and ccoperations.

Program analysis on the basis of audience preferences and expectations

As an in-depth module of the sixth visitor survey at the State Theater Karlsruhe from Summer 2019 the IKMW realized an online-workshop on the relationship between programming and visitor profiles.for the drama department on April 8 2020.

The workshop traced how visitor motives of different audience segments determine to which productions in the drama repertory they are attracted. Thus the theater can decide which audience segments might be motivated to visit specific productions and which aspects of these productions should be highlighted in communication and marketing.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic the workshop was held online, helping the theater to use the lockdown of the State Theater for strategic planning of the return to normality.

Opening of the first large museum exhbition on the history of documenta in the CAFA Art Museum in Beijing

For the first time in China the exhbition „The Myth of documenta – Arnold Bode and his Heirs“, specifically conceived for the Chinese public, presented the history of the documenta. Drawing on vast material mainly from the documenta Archive, the main developmental stages of the exhbition known all over the world were described on 1.500 sqm. The exhibition was realized in a cooperation between the CAFA Art Museum and the Institute for Arts and Media Management (IKM) of the  Freie Universität (FU) Berlin under the patronage of the German Foreign Secretary.

More than 600 exhibition objects (photos, films, newspapers, art works, installations, montages) exemplify the different curatorial concepts from Arnold Bode to Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev. Through the four main chapters „Reconstruction“, „Transformation“, „Anything Goes“, „Global Discourse“, the more than 60 years long success story becomes a spatial experience, reaching from the founding myth to its artistic conflicts, ruptures and transformations. In a prologue the inventor of the documenta, Arnold Bode, receives a specific appraisal, a documenta-lab addresses for the first time the innovation in arts education realized in the Kassel-based global exhibition of contemporary art.

The exhibition shown in Beijing from March 1 to 31, 2017, and in the New Gallery of Art in Shanghai from April 28 to June 18, 2017, is a result of a cooperation agreement between the documenta gGmbH and the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), which also projects a documenta Research Center and a Chinese documenta-Website.

IKMW shows relevance for city society and region in most comprehensive study on municipal museums

From March 2019 to January 2020 the IKMW together with the Museum of Natural History and the City Museum Kassel questioned the visitors of these two museums in the most comprehensive visitor survey on municipal museums in Germany to date. 3.721 completed surveys give a detailed image of the audience structure, its visiting behavior, expectations and satisfaction with the museums.

The results show that the population of Kassel and the surrounding region is perfectly represented in the museums‘ audiences. The two museums – among the 10% most successful museums of their type in Germany according to their visitor numbers – are „museums for everyone“.

Large shares of young visitors, wide reach, also beyond the region, and very high levels of satisfaction – the indicators give hope that the two museums will continue to motivate the population of the city and the region in all its diversity to get in touch with natural and city history.

The study „Kassel, seine städtischen Museen und ihr Publikum. Eine vergleichende Besucherstudie“ can be purchased at retailers oder directly at B&S Siebenhaar Verlag.

This is the press information on the publication.