Haus der Kunst (Munich, Germany)
Christian Philipp Müller
‘Histories in conflict: Haus der Kunst and the ideological uses of art, 1937–1955’

2013
Exhibition design

Based on its 2013 exhibit ‘Histories in conflict’, Munich’s Haus der Kunst exemplifies what Nigerian-born curator and writer Okwui Enwezor has described as ‘reflexive museum’: committed to contemporary art, while simultaneously examining and mediating the historical dimension of the contemporary. For this exhibition, Haus der Kunst invited Swiss conceptual artist Christian Philipp Müller to develop a dramaturgy that traced the building's history. Müller asked us to join him in creating the exhibition architecture.

Working in collaboration with Christian Philipp Müller and using his concept for the celebration of the 75^thanniversary of Haus der Kunst as our point of departure, we selected historically significant documentary photographs and texts and applied those within the various themes developed in three halls and a stairwell. In our design, we chose to combine texts with other black-and-white images in floor-to-ceiling prints on the walls of one of the halls. This large format created a monumentally static but cinema-like impression of the different periods that Haus der Kunst has survived.

Concept: Christian Philipp Müller

see also: 
Christian Philipp Müller: ‘Portrait of the museum as a chair: Typology of all 54 chairs in use at the National Museum of Art, Osaka’
Haus der Kulturen der Welt: Christian Philipp Müller ‘The spirit of the Haus: 20 years of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, 1989–2009’
Kunstmuseum Basel – Museum für Gegenwartskunst: ‘Christian Philipp Müller’
Tangente St.Pölten: Christian Philipp Müller ‘Ein Bad für Florian’