The Empty House
March 7–10, 2013
Museum Angewandte Kunst
Schaumainkai 17
60594 Frankfurt am Main
Germany
On March 7, 2013, following a three-month phase of renovations, the Museum Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, will be open to visitors for a brief interlude. Twenty-seven years after its construction, the Richard Meier building returns to its original state. In preparation for the 26th of April, when the museum will reopen with a radical new presentation concept, all alterations and installations not called for by the original design have been removed, visual axes recreated, the building’s transparency restored. Before the future exhibitions are installed, the empty building will present itself for three and a half days as The Empty House—providing a unique opportunity to experience it in unadulterated form: pure architecture. A trenchant framework programme encompassing a Pecha Kucha Night, a performance by Olaf Nicolai, and various guided tours will investigate Richard Meier’s architecture on the programmatic and artistic level.
Pecha Kucha Night
The Empty House will start on Thursday, March 7, with a Pecha Kucha Night, presented in cooperation with the Deutsches Architekturmuseum and the event agency Jazzunique. Among the speakers will be museum director Matthias Wagner K, curator and architect Thibaut de Ruyter—responsible for the future temporary room-in-room architecture—and Mahret Kupka who, as new guest curator, will be putting the areas of fashion/body and performance more prominently onto the museum’s agenda.
Olaf Nicolai: (Innere Stimme)
Starting on Friday, March 8, an Olaf Nicolai performance will accentuate the emptiness of the building with delicate, diffuse sounds. Between the notation for the left and right hands in Robert Schumann’s “Humoreske”, Op. 20, there is a third, intermediate notation system which cannot be played. Schumann titled it (Innere Stimme) (Inner Voice). For the pianist, this voice is present; for the public not familiar with the score, it remains unknown. Olaf Nicolai will isolate this virtual melody and have it interpreted by singers in the empty rooms of the museum for twenty-six hours. A philosophical commentary by Jean-Luc Nancy on Nicolai’s (Innere Stimme) will be published in German for the first time on this occasion.
Master-Key Guided Tours past – present – future
On Sunday, March 10, visitors are invited on a journey with Thibaut de Ruyter back in time to the 1980s; while Klaus Klemp and Matthias Wagner K will guide visitors through the empty interiors, the future exhibition scenarios, but also to otherwise inaccessible areas.
A Space of Possibility
The Museum Angewandte Kunst is undergoing fundamental reorganization under its new director Matthias Wagner K, who was appointed in 2012. A new form of presentation will take the place of the static permanent display dedicated to stylistic eras and geographical regions, supplemented by selective special exhibitions. Temporary thematic modules will leave the building’s architecture untouched while allowing a virtually infinite abundance of presentations against the background of the collection’s rich holdings. The museum is to be a platform which permits suspenseful, critical and challenging encounters with applied art, with the developments of the everyday aesthetics, and which aims not least of all to spark the visitors’ fantasies.
Opening hours:
Thursday, 7 March, 6pm to midnight
Friday, 8 March, 10am to Saturday, 9 March, 8pm
Sunday, 20 March, 10am to 6pm
The museum will be open non-stop from Friday 10am to Saturday 8pm
Programme:
Thursday, 7 March, 8pm
Pecha Kucha Night
Friday, 8 March, 6pm
to Saturday, 9 March, 8pm
Olaf Nicolai: (Innere Stimme)
Sunday, 10 March, 2, 3 and 4pm
Master-Key Guided Tours
Director: Matthias Wagner K Curator: Thibaut de Ruyter
