Craft is Cactus

Encompassing over 700 works from the international collection of the Museum Angewandte Kunst, this exhibition offers a new exploratory look at a range of items from a contemporary perspective. For the first time the museum is undertaking a reflective overview of works’ craftsmanship in its collection while examining the interface between art and design. What does craftsmanship mean today? This question is posed anew and reassessed in the context of the exhibition. The title underscores the ambiguous reputation of craft as an artistic discipline, while ironically playing on the ingenious survival traits of the “cactus” to express the future potential of the hand-made and its relation to art.

Installed before the backdrop of Richard Meier’s architecture, the exhibition makes use of a tension arising from a depot-like presentation and displays that visualize that theme of craftsmanship and its contemporary standards and classifications. This arrangement innovatively allows visitors to make comparisons from different perspectives, to experience the impact of craftsmanship, and to make hypotheses in terms of its contemporary relevance. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue that illuminates works of craftsmanship and revels in the discovery of materials. The publication includes Sandra Doeller’s design, the photographic images of Franziska Krieck, and texts by various authors and professionals. The catalogue is thus not simply a documentation of the collection but an artistic interpretation, a work-in-print, and also a reader. The exhibition is supported by the Hessische Kulturstiftung and the Polytechnische Gesellschaft e.V.

Director: Matthias Wagner K
Curator: Sabine Runde
Press contact: Natali-Lina Pitzer / T +49 (0)69 212 75339