Unbureaucratic and generous
The curator Kasper König has passed away
Looking around curiously, with a jute bag and a freshly ‘acquired’ stack of postcards in his hand - that's how people usually met Kasper König in Münster. Now the curator and artistic director, who was born in 1943 in Mettingen, Westphalia, has died at the age of 80. Everyone in the museum team has a memory of him, knows him as an interested visitor or knows an anecdote from life with him. His death leaves a gap that cannot be filled and we miss him.
Kasper König belonged to the second generation of West German exhibition organisers of the post-war period, who had a keen awareness of history. He was vehemently opposed to any form of trivialisation of the Nazi era. This was also expressed when he talked about the fact that the reconstruction of the city centre in Münster would probably have taken us back to the Middle Ages.
The fact that he wanted to make a difference in real space became clear when Klaus Bußmann asked him to curate a sculpture exhibition in 1977 and he agreed to curate the project area in the outdoor space. Kasper König and Klaus Bußmann, then curator and later director of the Westfälisches Landesmuseum (until 2004), were not only lifelong friends. The two were the driving force and inventors behind the concept of the exhibition, which later took place every ten years as Skulptur Projekte. This concept, which Kasper König later defended stubbornly and with great vigour against all attempts to soften it, has had a lasting impact on the city of Münster.
Skulptur Projekte
For over five decades, Kasper König has been at the centre of the debate about art in public spaces in Münster. Once a decade, the population wakes up from its Westphalian slumber and is confronted with artistic projects that have become deeply embedded in people's consciousness and everyday lives. König's basic idea was simple: make it open, outside and free, but not for nothing.
For half a century, he curated the exhibition with changing curators and ensured that art became deeply embedded in the collective memory of the population, evoking both joy and outrage in its wake.
International curator
As a curator and artistic director, Kasper König was instrumental in highlighting significant trends and themes.
In New York, he made contact with Claes Oldenburg and Andy Warhol at a young age and organised exhibitions at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm in the 1960s. After spending several years in the USA and teaching in Halifax, Canada, König was appointed to the newly founded chair of 'Art and the Public' at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in 1985. Just three years later, he took up a professorship at the Städelschule in Frankfurt, which he also headed as Rector from 1989 and where he founded the Portikus exhibition centre. He organised the exhibition 'Westkunst' in 1981, a kind of corruption of the imperial term 'world art', together with Laszlo Glozer. In 1984, he organised the equally groundbreaking exhibition 'Von hier aus' in Düsseldorf.
From 2000 to 2012, Kasper König was director of the Museum Ludwig in Cologne. He was a driving force in the museum world, with an unparalleled approach to preservation. His work was reflected in collections wherever he worked. This was also the case with the temporary sculpture projects in Münster, in which König unquestionably assigned a physical and conceptual place to the museum as a backbone, memory store and public space. Against this backdrop, an immense public collection has also been created, which reflects developments in art like nowhere else. However, in the context of a carefully curated collection, visitors do not encounter flashy, ostentatious sculptures. Instead, they find works that have become meeting places. Campfires, not lighthouses.
Advocate for the artists
Kasper König has always been an advocate for the artists. He was close to art and socially relevant issues, and he knew how to handle controversy. He even quoted Wilhelm Busch: „Der Künstler fühlt sich stets gekränkt, wenn’s anders kommt, als wie er denkt.“ (The artist alwys feels offended when things turn out differently than he thinks).
Kasper König defined the five exhibitions in Münster as a series of decisive actions: rejecting, changing, discarding, rethinking, discussing and enabling. This is evident in the Skulptur Projekte Archive, which also houses unrealised concepts. Klaus Bußmann was right to take the exhibition files to the depot as a museum collection, as Kasper König recognised. The archive holdings have been an integral part of the exhibition since 2007 and the Skulptur Projekte Archiv at the LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur has been open to the public and academics since 2017.
By reflecting from within and without, Kasper König decisively escaped provincialism in Westphalia. He had an immense network and organised most things over the phone or in direct conversation. When he consulted his personal address book, which we all know affectionately as his self-adhesive Facebook, he was passionate, emotional, and even aggressive at times. He always fought for the right cause: art. I am not romanticising or whitewashing. He was resolute, incorruptible and humorous.
He avoided unpleasant or lazy compromises by firmly stating, "In adversity, the middle way is death." He was unafraid of criticism and actively sought it out, as evidenced by his role in curating the Manifesta in St Petersburg in 2014, despite the growing tensions between Russia and Ukraine.
A matter of the heart
Kasper König was unquestionably unique in many areas. It is, unfortunately, the case that his attitude and habitus were on the decline.
For half a century, he was repeatedly drawn to Westphalia to curate the Skulptur Projekte and the city of Münster. No one has made such a continuous and purposeful impact on the history of contemporary art. For Kasper König, the Skulptur Projekte were a matter of the heart. He was certain that without scepticism, autonomy and fearlessness, they would be blown immediately.
Kasper König was certain that engaging with art can be a consolation. This is a call that marks the end of a chapter. As a museum team, we mourn the loss of this unbureaucratic and generous person.
Marianne Wagner
