Art Museum Thurgau

Ittingen Charterhouse, view from the northeast

The Art Museum Thurgau has been housed in parts of the Ittingen Charterhouse (municipality of Warth-Weiningen ) in the canton of Thurgau since 1983 . The focus of the collection and exhibition activities are: regional art of the Lake Constance region , international outsider art and international projects related to the location of the museum.

history

The collection of the Thurgau Art Museum is an undertaking of the government of the Canton of Thurgau. This was preceded by the collection of the Thurgau Art Association, which was founded in 1935. The actual collection activity did not begin until the Second World War . From 1942 there was an art loan, which not only served the purchase of works of art , but also general art funding. The pictures were exhibited for the public in the large conference room of the government building ( Ernst Kreidolf , Otto Schilt ).

In the first few years, works of art were purchased without a concept , the pictures were purchased as decoration for offices and public buildings . In 1957 the Thurgauische Kunstgesellschaft inherited the estate of the painter Adolf Dietrich and later that of the painter Carl Roesch . Today, both estates are looked after by the Thurgau Art Museum, as has the entire estate of the painter Hans Krüsi , who bequeathed his work to the Thurgau Art Museum , since 1995 . Estates force a museum to sift through and archive the heritage professionally and to carry out scientific projects. That is why the Art Museum Thurgau has had a digital inventory system and well-organized storage and archive rooms since the mid-1990s.

In 1963 the "Commission for the Promotion of Fine Art" was created and a targeted collecting activity began. National Councilor Ernst Mühlemann was President of the Thurgau Art Society from 1959 to 1979 and promoted the establishment of an art museum in his home canton. He also helped to build up an international collection of naive art around Adolf Dietrich . A donation from Thurgauer Kantonalbank in 1971 on the occasion of its centenary made it possible to open an art museum at Ringstrasse 16 in Frauenfeld . Today the preservation of monuments of the canton Thurgau is in this house.

collection

In 1981, the then director of the museum, Heinrich Ammann , curated an exhibition in Singen (Hohentwiel) in which, in addition to contemporary art, he presented the five most important representatives of art in the canton of Thurgau: Adolf Dietrich, Hans Brühlmann , Helen Dahm , Carl Roesch and Ignaz Epper .

In 1983, the Thurgau Art Museum was opened in the modern museum rooms of the Ittingen Charterhouse. The five painters mentioned above and Ernst Kreidolf each received a hermitage for their works, the more modern works shared the long corridor along the Klausen.

In the 1990s, the strict collection of international naive was expanded. Since then, well-known works of outsider art can be found in the collection of the Thurgau Art Museum , which, in addition to the naive, also includes Art brut or the creation of “works of art”. In the 1993 mission statement, the restriction to purchases from artists from the Lake Constance region was abandoned. Since then, in addition to works by regional artists, works by internationally renowned artists whose works of art are closely related to the location of the museum have also been purchased.

Two examples from recent years are the tower of failure by Tadashi Kawamata and two works by Joseph Kosuth : “The silent library” in the former wine cellar of the Charterhouse and the inscription of a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche on the facade of the museum: “Because only as aesthetic Phenomenon is existence and the world eternally justified ». Also worth mentioning here is Janet Cardiff's audio work “Ittingen Walk”.

Markus Landert has been director of both the Ittingen Museum and the Thurgau Art Museum in the Ittingen Charterhouse since 1992 . An extension of the art museum is planned.

Joseph Kosuth: Facade of the Thurgau Art Museum
Joseph Kosuth: "A Silent Library"
Tadashi Kawamata: «Tower of Failure»
Adolf Dietrich: "Balbo, lying on the meadow"
Adolf Dietrich: "Ship's pier in winter"
Hans Krüsi: «Naife Art»
Carl Roesch: "Two Boys"
Louis Vivin: «Jungle»
Josef Wittlich: "Untitled (battle scene)"