Museum of Art

The Art Association Bremerhaven gets its own museum.

It is well-known throughout the art scene that interesting exhibitions are shown again and again in the Art Gallery Bremerhaven or in the Cabinet of current art.

Many artists who are famous now like Gerhard Richter, Candida Höfer, Clegg & Guttmann, Bernhard Prinz, Elvira Bach, Anne Berning, Paloma Varga Weisz, Gregor Schneider, Karin Kneffel, Katharina Grosse, Rolf Julius, Stefan Wissel, Axel Lieber, Tatjana Doll, Sergej Jensen or Michaël Borremans - just to name a few - were presented here early in their career and far from the art metropolises. Some of them had their first chance of exhibiting publicly in Bremerhaven.

A fact not well-known is that the Art Association Bremerhaven of 1886 also holds an enormous collection of art. Since its founding year, items were continually bought for the collection, always observing the international art development and thus acquiring over time many young, high-quality works of art. Many of those who exhibited in Bremerhaven and then became famous are represented in the collection with their artworks.

However, it could not be publicly shown in Bremerhaven. Only a few works were given as items on loan to national and international special exhibitions, since the Association did not have adequate rooms in Bremerhaven.

This has now come to an end. The Association has received a brand new Museum of Art right in the center of the city, adjacent to the Art Gallery. 14 rooms of different sizes on three floors offer 700 m² of exhibition space to show the artistic positions of more than a century of collecting.

The emphasis is not on a historical presentation, but on the collection that has grown from the direct contact to the artists. Their works document the local commitment for the arts in Bremerhaven and the active debate between artists and curators of the Art Association.

Especially since the late 1960s, this cooperation has brought works of important artists to the collection, such as Gerhard von Graevenitz, Raimund Girke or Klaus Staudt. Later, art series of Franz Erhard Walther, Ulrich Rückriem, Jürgen Partenheimer, Palermo, Stephan Balkenhol, Ilja Kabakov or Hamish Fulton were added to the collection and recently younger works of Andreas Slominski, Norbert Schwontkowski, Manfred Pernice, Gregor Schneider or Ceal Floyer.

The opening of the new building took place on Sunday, October 7th, 2007 with two exhibitions: paintings of the current Remix Series of Georg Baselitz were presented coming fresh from the studio along with sensitive portrait photographs by Benjamin Katz under the title "Die Richtung stimmt" ("The direction is right").