We Call it Ludwig : The Museum is Turning 40!

The ti­tle We Call It Lud­wig was pur­pose­ly kept open-end­ed, since the ex­hi­bi­tion is not in­tend­ed to of­fer a con­crete def­i­ni­tion, but a va­ri­e­ty of sub­jec­tive per­spec­tives that to­gether form a kalei­do­s­cop­ic im­age of the in­sti­tu­tion. The Mu­se­um Lud­wig defines it­self in large part based on its own his­to­ry, its col­lec­tion, and, above all, the peo­ple who have shaped it – as an artists’ mu­se­um. We Call It Lud­wig ac­counts for this si­t­u­a­tion by re­flect­ing along with th­ese par­ti­ci­pants in the art sys­tem on what the mu­se­um has been, is, and can be.

The se­lec­tion of twen­ty-five par­ti­ci­pat­ing artists span­n­ing ev­ery conti­nent de­lib­er­ate­ly un­der­s­cores Peter and Irene Lud­wig’s glob­al ap­proach to the col­lec­tion. For in­s­tance, they main­tained close con­tacts with Cu­ba, where they met the artist Dian­go Hernán­dez in the mid- 1990s. Now Hernán­dez will trans­late im­por­tant ex­hi­bi­tion ti­tles from the his­to­ry of the mu­se­um as well as its lo­go in­to a sen­su­al and po­et­ic land­s­cape of un­du­lat­ing seat­ing and mu­rals.

The Guer­ril­la Girls col­lec­tive will take a very dif­fer­ent ap­proach by crit­i­cal­ly ree­val­u­at­ing the col­lec­tion from a femi­n­ist per­spec­tive. Maria Eich­horn, by con­trast, will deal with the pro­cess­es that led to the sign­ing of an em­ploy­ment con­tract with her as an artist, thus em­pha­siz­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tive struc­ture of the mu­se­um. With The Cho­co­late Mas­ter from 1981, Hans Haacke will pre­sent the re­sult of his metic­u­lous and crit­i­cal re­search on the fam­i­ly and cor­po­rate his­to­ry of the cho­co­late man­u­fac­tur­ers and art col­lec­tors Peter and Irene Lud­wig.

Par­ti­ci­pat­ing artists:
Ge­orges Adéag­bo, Ai Wei­wei, Ei Arakawa & Michel Au­d­er, Min­er­va Cue­vas, Maria Eich­horn, An­drea Fras­er, Meschac Ga­ba, Guer­ril­la Girls, Hans Haacke, Dian­go Hernán­dez, Can­di­da Höfer, Bodys Isek Kin­gelez, Kuehn Malvezzi, Chris­tian Philipp Müller, Mar­cel Oden­bach, Ah­met Ögüt, Claes Ol­d­en­burg, Pratchaya Phin­thong, Alexan­dra Piri­ci & Manuel Pel­muş, Ger­hard Richter, Av­ery Singer, Jür­gen Stoll­hans, Rose­marie Trock­el, Vil­la De­sign Group, Chris­to­pher Wil­li­ams