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Kestnergesellschaft

Kestnergesellschaft, Hanover

Kestner Gesellschaft (Kestner Society) is an art institution in Hanover, Germany, founded in 1916 to promote the arts. Its founders included the painter Wilhelm von Debschitz (1871–1948). The association blossomed under the management of Alexander Dorner [de] and Justus Bier [de], pioneering modern art.

After World War II, Alfred Hentzen [de] took over the management in 1947, followed by Fritz Schmalenbach [de]. In 1997 the Kestner Gesellschaft moved into new premises at Goseriede 11, the former site of the Goseriede Aquatic Center. The new gallery is next to the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung, Hanover's newspaper.

The institution hit the headlines in 2005 when it exhibited a mud house created by Spanish artist Santiago Sierra featuring a room with mud floor reminiscent of Hanover's Maschsee, an artificial lake.

From 2015 to 2019, institution’s first female director was Christina Végh.

The current director is Adam Budak, who took on the position in November 2020.

History

In 1916, with World War I raging, the Kestner Gesellschaft was founded by citizens of Hanover, among them Hermann Bahlsen, August Madsack and Fritz Beindorff. Their goal was to bring internationally renowned and innovative artists and their current works to Hanover. The first exhibition representing the starting point for this concept in 1916 consisted of Max Liebermann's new work. The first director, Paul Küppers, stated at the time that the aim was to present artworks which "do not simply function as a relaxing amusement but instead have a stimulating and – if necessary – provocative and scandalizing effect".

In 1936, the Kestner Gesellschaft was closed under pressure from Hitler's Nazism. The director at the time, Justus Bier, a Jew, presented artists Erich Heckel, Gerhard Marcks, Christian Rohlfs and August Macke – artists who were featured in the notorious Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich only one year later. Soon after the war, the new Kestner Gesellschaft was opened in the Warmbüchenstraße in 1948 by Hanoverians with service to the public in mind, among them Hermann Bahlsen, Wilhelm Stichweh, Bernhard Sprengel and Günther Beindorff, the director of the company Pelikan.

In the 1990s, this building could no longer meet the high technical demands of modern exhibition operations, and the Kestner Gesellschaft looked for a new location. The former Goseriede Aquatic Center in the centre was chosen, and a team of internationally selected architects designed and oversaw the transformation into a modern exhibition house.

The list of artists whose works have been exhibited during the 75-year history – excluding the years of closure – reads like a "Who's Who" in the history of 20th- and 21st-century art, among them Paul Klee (1920), Wassily Kandinsky (1923), El Lissitzky (1923) and Kurt Schwitters (1924), both friends of the Kestner Gesellschaft, Joan Miró (1952, 1956, 1989), Jean Dubuffet (1960), Marcel Duchamp and Horst Janssen (1965), Pablo Picasso (1973, 1993), Wolf Vostell (1977), Andy Warhol (1981 as his first retrospective in Germany, 2001) Jean-Michel Basquiat (1986 as the youngest at age 25,^[1] 1989), Georg Baselitz (1987), Joseph Beuys (1975, 1990), Richard Prince (1991), Rebecca Horn (1978, 1991, 1997), Antoni Tàpies (1962, 1998), Jonathan Meese (2002), Thomas Ruff (2003), Peter Doig (2004), Rochelle Feinstein, (2016/17), James Richards, (2016/17) and Annette Kelm (2017).

In 2017, the third edition of the collection Made in Germany [de], which is collectively curated on a five-year-cycle by the three institutions Kestner Gesellschaft, Kunstverein Hannover and Sprengel Museum Hannover, took place. Under the heading "Produktion. Made in Germany Three", the exhibition focused on the conditions of producing art in Germany. As participating institutions, the Schauspiel Hannover, the Festival Theaterformen, and the KunstFestSpiele are contributing the first time.

Kestner Gesellschaft at the Goseriede

The House

In 1997, the Prime Minister of Lower Saxony, Gerhard Schröder, inaugurated the new facilities of the Kestner Gesellschaft at Goseriede 11. Simultaneously, the Munich Abendzeitung declared the remodelled exhibition facility "Germany’s most beautiful exhibition house." The remodelling of the former Goseriede Aquatic Center into an up-to-date exhibition house not only incorporates the high technical demands of modern exhibition operations but also preserves and showcases the Jugendstil features of this historic landmark. With its five halls on two levels, the house has at its command more than 1,500 square meters of exhibition surface.

History of the House

From 1902 to 1905 the Hanoverian chief city architectural commissioner, Carl Wolff, oversaw the construction of the Goseriede Aquatic Center. The middle section of the public bathing facility was destroyed in 1943 during the Second World War, and later rebuilt from 1947 to 1953. After the reopening, the pool remained in use until 1982. In the same year, the city placed the beautiful Jugendstil façade under protection as a monument. In 1990 the Madsack publishing company purchased the building, offering the sections of the former women's pool area, entrance hall and all adjoining rooms to the Kestner Gesellschaft for its use. An international architectural competition was launched in 1992 in search of an innovative design for the space with the support of the Norddeutsche Landesbank. Chaired by Prof. Peter P. Schweger, the jury awarded the first prize to the Hanoverian architects Kai-Michael Koch, Anne Panse and Christian Hühn. In collaboration with the curators of the Kestner Gesellschaft, their design was developed further into an elegant and dynamic amalgamation of modern architectural elements. The prize of the Association of German Architects of the State of Lower Saxony was awarded to the building in 1998.

Exhibition spaces

Each of the five halls at Kestner Gesellschaft has its own unique dimensions and atmosphere. Able to accommodate diverse exhibition concepts, the spaces can be transformed with high-tech equipment including a close-meshed and invisible network of electrical connections in the floors, walls and ceilings. The lateral galleries in the Halls II and III can be closed off to create smaller exhibition spaces. The total of twelve entrances into the Claussen Hall may be used to create different orientations of projects and viewers. In planning for the building renovations, care was also taken to create the necessary infrastructure for the careful transport and handling of artworks to and within the halls, with direct access to the exhibition spaces via loading dock. Due to ceiling-high gates on the ground- and upper-floors along with a large elevator, pieces arrive safely and easily into the exhibition halls.

Kestnereditions

Since 2003, Kestnereditions are being released related to every exhibition. The works, which include graphic art, photography and other art forms, are offered exclusively for members of the Kestner Gesellschaft in limited editions.

Exhibitions until 1936

Artist	First exhibited year	Add'l exhibited years
Theodor Alt	1922
Eduard Arnthal	1921
Hans Arp	1924
Ernst Barlach	1918	1919, 1931
Max Beckmann	1918	1919, 1931
René Beeh	1921
Herman Bieling	1922
Alf Björn	1925
Albert Bloch	1921
Walter Bondy	1925
Theo von Brockhusen	1918	1919
Max Burchartz	1921	1923
Erich Büttner	1918	1919
Karl Caspar	1916
Theo Champion	1925
Lovis Corinth	1917	1928
Elisabet Delbrück	1924
Otto Dix	1927
Kees van Dongen	1922
Bernhard Dörries	1926
Hans Düne	1924
Josef Eberz	1917
James Ensor	1927
Adolf Falke	1924
Lyonel Feininger	1919	1924–25, 1932
Conrad Felixmüller	1921
Margarete Fischer-Bayer	1925
Naum Gabo	1930
Gerlwh (Gerardus Ladage)	1922
Vincent van Gogh	1928
Walter Gropius	1931
George Grosz	1921
Erich Heckel	1919	1935
Franz Heckendorf	1918
August Heitmüller	1921	1922
Ferdinand Hodler	1925
Carl Hofer	1925	1927
Adolf Hölzel	1918
Willy Jaeckel	1916	1917
Alexey von Jawlensky	1920	1924
Wassily Kandinsky	1923
Fred Kayser	1924
Paul Klee	1919	1931
César Klein	1918
Linda Kögel	1924
Wilhelm Kohlhoff	1919
Oskar Kokoschka	1925
Georg Kolbe	1933
Käthe Kollwitz	1929
Bruno Krauskopf	1919
Alfred Kubin	1930
Wilhelm Lehmbruck	1920
Max Liebermann	1916
El Lissitzky	1923
Adrian Lubbers	1925
August Macke	1918	1925, 1935
Franz Marc	1931	1936
Gerhard Marcks	1936
Frans Masereel	1926	1931
Ludwig Meidner	1918
Moritz Melzer	1920
Gerd Meyer	1924
Paula Modersohn-Becker	1917	1922, 1934
László Moholy-Nagy	1923
Wilhelm Morgner	1922
Edvard Munch	1929
Heinrich Nauen	1918
Emil Nolde	1918	1922, 1924, 1928, 1934
Max Pechstein	1922
Pablo Picasso	1932
Pierre-Auguste Renoir	1925
Paul Riess	1925
Auguste Rodin	1925
Emy Roeder	1922
Christian Rohlfs	1919	1924, 1930, 1936
Wolf Röhricht	1921
Josef Scharl	1933
Oskar Schlemmer	1932
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff	1920	1923
Carl Moritz Schreiner	1922
Otto Schulze	1919
Kurt Schwitters	1917	1918, 1924
Götz von Seckendorff	1919
Max Slevogt	1932	1934
Milly Steger	1922
Käthe Steinitz	1922
Stanislaus Stückgold	1917
Ernst Thoms	1926
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec	1925
Wilhelm Trübner	1917
Albert Weisgerber	1917
Emil Rudolf Weiß	1917
Konrad Westermayr	1920
Rudolf Wolke	1917
Heinrich Zille	1931
Leni Zimmermann-Heitmüller	1921	1922

Exhibitions from 1948 until 1995

Exhibitions since 1997

Literature

Wieland Schmied: Wegbereiter zur modernen Kunst – 50 Jahre Kestner-Gesellschaft. Hannover 1966.
Ines Katenhusen: Kunst und Politik. Hannovers Auseinandersetzungen mit der Moderne in der Weimarer Republik. Hahn, Hannover 1998, ISBN 3-7752-4955-9.
Veit Görner: Kestnerchronik. Buch 1, Hannover 2006, Buch 2, Hannover 2009.