Thursday, October 11

Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen

In Dusseldorf yesterday I visit the Kunstsammlung, which houses art from the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. A mediocre collection is housed in a spectacular building, which opened in 1986 - pictured. Before, the art was located in the small castle Schloss Jägerhof in the Hofgarten (Central Park of Düsseldorf) but soon outgrew its space. The museum consists of two wings: K20 (twentieth century with deep point on classic modern art) and K21 (artwork beginning from the 1980s). The U.S. is represented with work from Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Andy Warhol. Photographers include Andreas Gursky (who I love), Candida Hofer, Thomas Ruff and Thomas Struth and Jeff Wal. A nifty display on moving film is exhibiting but I found this rather shallow excluding one display of five reels showing different stories with antagonising words: "Jill climbs the electrical tower." "The tower maintains 240,000 volts." "Jill drinks vodka" and so on.

Last night watching "March of the Penguins" I tell Madeleine they are all goners due to global warming. This morning Madeleine tells Sonnet that we have to stop driving our car "because we are going to kill Santa and the penguins!"