Matthias Mühling is to blame – but the director of the Munich Lenbachhaus should be able to live very well with this guilt. According to Jörg Johnen, it is thanks to his work and that of his team, but also to his personal efforts, that he donated his collection of contemporary art to the Lenbachhaus. “Without ifs and buts,” as Mühling emphasizes, that is, without any demands or conditions being associated with it. A gift that Munich’s cultural advisor Anton Biebl praised extensively when it was announced and highlighted it as “generous civic commitment”.
No wonder everyone is as happy as the snow bunnies. Apart from the fact that the donation is seen as an “ideal addition” to the in-house collection, which also “closes important gaps”, according to Mühling, it is also worth a lot. There is talk of a “low seven-digit amount”, probably around two to three million euros.
The donation includes more than 60 works of contemporary art. Paintings, photo and media art, ceramics as well as sculptures and material works by David Claerbout, Katharina Fritsch, Rodney Graham, On Kawara, Anri Sala, Karin Sander, Wilhelm Sasnal, Wiebke Siem, Rosemarie Trockel, Jeff Wall and many others. And with the works of Tino Sehgal and Roman Ondak, the Lenbachhaus also has performance art for the first time.
Visitors will find out what it looks like at the checkout. To do this, you should listen very carefully to what the checkout staff say to you after you have bought the ticket (sehgal). And on Sunday afternoons, in the large first-floor showroom, draw your attention to a toddler who doesn’t happen to be padding around there (Ondak).
Jörg Johnen, born in Ulm in 1948, has some connections to Munich. He studied art history here and founded the Johnen+Schöttle gallery together with Rüdiger Schöttle in 1984; Schöttle – resident in Munich since 1968 – remained on the Isar, while Johnen went to the Rhineland and took up residence in Cologne. In 2004 he, meanwhile one of the biggest players in the German scene, moved to Berlin. Eleven years later he retired and merged with the no less renowned gallery owner Esther Schipper. Since then he has been doing what he likes best: writing books and collecting art.