BIELEFELD, GERMANY.-150 new acquisitions since 1996, from Pablo Picasso to Hiroshi Sugimoto, from Edvard Munch to Jonathan Meese will be presented by the Kunsthalle Bielefeld during the summer of 2005—and this, despite the fact that there has been no official funding for new acquisitions for a year. The Philip Johnson building, with its grand overview of both stories, as well as an index of works featuring all acquisitions, donations, and permanent loans help present these works to the public, some of which have rarely or never been shown.

Thirty-one photographs, forming a small retrospective of Sugimoto’s works, were purchased with some “leftover” funds. Immediately afterward, a photograph by Diane Arbus was donated to the museum. In 1997, the museum supporters’ foundation joined with the State of North-Rhine Westphalia to acquire a major work in marble, the “Tongue,” by Swiss sculptor Not Vital. In the same year, the Staff Stiftung in Lemgo approached the Kunsthalle Bielefeld with an offer to purchase classic modern works for the permanent collection. The first purchase was “Village Street in Kragerø“ (1911), an impressive painting by Edvard Munch. In the following year, major works and groups of works by Jean Arp, Max Ernst, Man Ray, Andy Warhol, and Robert Longo were added. In 1998, the Kunsthalle was also able to acquire some works by Picasso for the first time, and so the “Tête de fou” (1905) and a unique series of the “Suite des Saltimbanques“ in excellent condition, joined the collection. Furthermore, paintings by Lyonel Feininger, Frantisek Kupka, Georg Muche, Victor Servranckx, and Georges Vantongerloo, as well as four large photographs of architecture by Sugimoto have also been added.

Some of the works from private donors include pieces by Carl Hofer, Ernst-Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, Christian Rohlfs, and Ossip Zadkine. The museum society was a continual help, purchasing other contemporary works by important artists such as Vanessa Beecroft, Louise Bourgeois, George Condo, Olafur Eliasson, Adam Fuss, Jonathan Meese, Matthias Müller, Thomas Schütte, and Peter Fischli/David Weiss.

Since 2005, Kunsthalle has also been cooperating with a group of anonymous collectors from Bielefeld, which has loaned its acquisitions to the museum for the time being until the end of 2009. Besides important works by Fuss and Schütte, there are installations by Jonathan Meese, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Not Vital, as well as a film by Clemens von Wedemeyer.

The exhibition of these recent acquisitions—more than 150 works from the Bielefeld collection—opens up a discussion about the way committed citizens view their participation as a matter of course, as well as the former city museum’s present-day mission to collect. The catalog will feature illustrations and discussions of the acquisitions, including more than twenty sculptures, thirty paintings, and around forty photographs.