The symposium takes place on Thursday 24th of May and is co-hosted by the Rector of the Städelschule, Prof. Dr. Daniel Birnbaum, and the Dean of the Architecture Class, Ben van Berkel. It will include a group of distinguished guests from the international art and architecture milieus.
With the steadily increasing pressure of information flow and capital, the status and role of the contemporary museum within the arts as well as other fields are continuously challenged. In the arts, fairs are emerging as ubiquitous events to inject market interest and social flair. The Guggenheim and the Louvre have become export items. Museums at large are prompted to devise new, specific strategies for the dissemination to and entertainment of visitors via the Internet.
With these changes, is the museum as an institution for archival services and the mere reification of existing culture is passé? What role and whose interests will the museum serve tomorrow? Do we need to sift the past from the present and future in such away that museums become institutions for the sheer preservation of yesterday’s treasures? Does the museum as an institution, as it emerged over the last couple of centuries, still hold relevance, or should the arts and other fields look elsewhere to formulate a vital form to present previous periods’ collectibles and tomorrow’s cultural gems. And for this ‘elsewhere,’ is the emerging and ever more popular art fair a good model, its current architectural typology as inspiring as your average sitcom?
These and other questions are what will be addressed in the symposium, The New ‘Museum’?, which the Städelschule hosts in order to address one of the more difficult and interesting set of questions that our culture is facing.
Schedule:
17:00 Welcome: Daniel Birnbaum & Ben van Berkel
Art & Architecture
17:05 Volker Rattemeyer, Director Museum Wiesbaden
17:25 Peter Cachola Schmal, Director German Architecture Museum DAM Discussion
Architecture & Art
18:00 HG Merz, architect
18:15 Ben van Berkel, UNStudio / Städelschule Discussion
Branding the Museum
18:50 Nicolas V. Iljine, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
19:05 Emily King, Frieze Magazine Discussion
19:40 Open Discussion. Moderation: Daniel Birnbaum
Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste – Städelschule
Architecture Class
Dürerstr. 10
60596 Frankfurt am Main
Germany
tel.: 49 69 60 50 08 -69
fax.: 49 69 60 50 08 -66
http://www.staedelschule.de/architecture
