Disclaimer: Wir, die Mitarbeiter*innen des Kunstmuseum Bochum, sind ein internationales Team und gestalten unsere Kommunikation dementsprechend so offen wie möglich. Deshalb haben wir uns für die englische Sprache entschieden für unsere Weeknotes.
We at the Kunstmuseum Bochum are an international team and want to keep our cooperations international as well and as open as possible. Therefore, we decided to write our weeknotes in English.
Week 4
Welcome back to our weeknotes! You’ve accompanied us through our preparations the last few weeks and now the time has come: we opened our new exhibition “INVENTUR” on Halloween. Fantastic costumes as casual sculptures, an exploration of the entrails of the museum, live music in the elevator by Fion Pellacini and instruments made out of mannequins by 120 DEN, made for a fright- and delightful evening together.
A view of the exhibition “Inventur” - © H.Holtgreve, 2022
1. We met new people!
Choosing Halloween for an exhibition opening was risky: people have plans and might not respond to our invitation in the museum. We thought a lot about how to communicate that we’re not planning a ‘stiff vernissage', but a party where everyone feels welcome. We threw a costume party and tempted our visitors with spooky behind the scenes tours of the basement – and it paid off, many came! Halloween also offered a great opportunity to give an example of how versatile our objects are: we exhibited the scariest sculptures we have in store. It’s also a lesson in making the museum accessible.
2. Explaining the exhibition and how to look at it
“INVENTUR” has many different parts, and from the beginning we knew we had to find a new and playful approach to ‘explain’ the project. This involved talking sculptures (members of the team dressed up as Gargoyles) and took the public on a tour to explain the different aspects of the exhibition and how we have reimagined the museum space. The question of „worthless“ objects was discussed on the example of Louise Nevelson’s work. This underlines a central question of the inventory at the moment: what defines a sculpture and how do we archive materiality? - Anecdote: we found a „red stone“ in our depot without any kind of label, and we’re not even sure it’s art.
3. We gave a tour of our workspaces
We felt that we could not open an exhibition like „INVENTUR“, which showcases the hidden work of the museum, in just giving a guided tour of the exhibition space. After showing the studio where we photograph, where we restore and all the artifacts accompanying the art, our team guided the public through the depots of the museum. It became visible how „by chance neighbourhoods“ of objects generated new meanings and interpretations.
4. Room for discussion
„INVENTUR“ also consists of a series of events. Free guided tours, but also discussions held each Wednesday evening, about the different aspects of inventory at the museum. There are still many open questions remaining, the biggest of them all: you can’t store people and their stories in depots, how do we archive the social aspects of a museum?
Thank you for tagging along, see you next week!
- CN
About us:
The Kunstmuseum Bochum is a small art museum in Bochum, Germany, rethinking its collection.
Through these Weeknotes we want to document insights and share thoughts about our ongoing inventory process at the Kunstmuseum Bochum. We call it “process”, not “project” on purpose because beyond a need of order, our collection needs a re-telling of its stories, in all its iterations. For more information, you can contact us at: cnies@bochum.de or if you’re reading this for the first time, join our Substack for regular updates.