FREUNDESKREIS
ART AT HEART
Reinhold Würth is convinced that art is unmatched in its ability to conceive of and challenge new ways of thinking. Other art houses usually have one, or perhaps several focuses based on which they collect art and curate and design exhibitions. Not so in the case of Würth, where it is primarily Reinhold Würth himself who collects based on his personal preferences. He may obtain assistance from an advisory board, but he doesn’t leave the collecting to others. After all, the German term sammeln (to collect) is derived from the Old High German samanōn, which means primarily to “bring together, unite, and accumulate” and not “sorting and categorising”. And so, this justification – “as long as the will to express, depth, and a certain vigour are discernible in the works in question […], a collage by Hans Arp arranged according to the ‘laws of chance’ can inspire me just as much as a segment of a circle by Max Bill, a late work by Picasso, or a beautiful saint by Cranach” – sums up this collector’s free-thinking approach. The themes and epochs may change without slavish adherence to a chronology, not because Würth would consider this arbitrary, but because he realised early on that art is, in any case, an endless transit zone for a wide variety of movements. Today, the Würth Collection comprises not only old masters and Kunstkammer treasures, but also contemporary video art by David Hockney. And it preserves an international collection of nativity scenes and southern Italian cantastoria paintings just as painstakingly as it does sculpture ensembles by Elmgreen & Dragset. As a result, it has been able to stage, essentially from the museum’s own collection and only supplemented by a few loans, thematically complex exhibitions: Forest Fascination, which explored aspects of the history of the cultural awareness of nature and the forest; Menagerie, which looked at the subject of animals in art and our relationship with animals; and Water, Clouds, Wind, which covered everything from ancient notions of Christ’s appearances in clouds to the omniscient Internet and the virtual cloud. When his father died prematurely in the 1950s, the young Reinhold Würth took over the small family screw business and built it up into a global corporation. He soon also discovered his passion for art, literature, and music. Alongside his business, he experienced a growing urge to collect and patronise the arts as well as to share his passion with his employees, business partners, and the public.
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In the 1980s, Reinhold Würth decided to place an exhibition hall in the heart of the planned new administrative complex of his global corporation. A guest article by C. Sylvia Weber.
On the occasion of the company’s fortieth anniversary, Reinhold Würth, who was 50 at the time, announced that an architectural competition would be held for a new, modern administration building. In addition to spacious offices, the company restaurant, and conference rooms, it would house a museum for the history of screws and screw threads as well as an exhibition space for the company’s collection of modern art, now amounting to several hundred works, some of which were in storage depots due to their size. The Stuttgart architects Siegfried Müller and Maja Djordjevic-Müller won the competition for their design, which most convincingly embodied the entrepreneur’s vision of integrating the “inspiring experience of good architecture and art into the everyday (working) lives of employees, business partners and interested members of the public, and of bringing different art movements to the attention of a broad public through active communication”. With its international outlook, culture at Würth was to be addressed both inwardly and outwardly. To this end, the 800 squaremetre exhibition space was placed in the centre of the administration building. To facilitate cosmopolitan interaction between employees and the public, the museums were to be accessible not only on weekdays but also at weekends. Würth’s approach differed markedly from that of other German companies with art collections, which at that time only opened them to certain groups by appointment or on certain days. Like public museums, Würth wanted the collection to be there for everyone, seven days a week, with free admission. On 25 December 1991, the doors finally opened, and an initially regional public took its first festive stroll to see modern art at the new Museum Würth. Since then, seventythree exhibitions have been viewed by 2.33 million visitors. The young museum experienced its finest transformation and international breakthrough in 1995. Shortly before their wrapping of the Reichstag in Berlin, Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped and tied up the exhibition hall, including the interior free-standing spiral staircase, the side decks, and walkway bridges, while leaving uncovered the side walls otherwise intended for the presentation of pictorial works. Within just four months, 85,000 people came to Künzelsau to experience the walk-in artwork. The concept of the integrated museum has become established in the Würth Group throughout Europe. High-
quality exhibition spaces have been created in administrative buildings or in the immediate vicinity at ten of the company’s other locations. Music and literature are also catered for at Würth: a prize for European literature, an international poetry lectureship, and the Würth Philharmonic Orchestra based at the Carmen Würth Forum have all been conceived to intensify the interweaving of art and society. “Art and culture are not society’s cosy corner, but the very thing that holds it together”, said former Bundestag President Norbert Lammerts recently during a lecture in Künzelsau, and quite rightly so. For Würth’s commitment to culture is as much a programmatic commitment to democracy, politics, and society as the significant financial commitment it makes in terms of Article 14 of the German Grundgesetz (Constitution), as it is also for threatened or marginalised people globally. So let us stand up here against populism of all kinds – in the literal sense for limitless freedom, humanity, and democracy – especially in times of increased migration (of peoples globally fleeing war, economic hardship, or the effects of climate change) in which nothing less than the continued existence of a functioning global civilisation in all its facets is at stake.
C. SYLVIA WEBER, is Executive Vice President of the Wuerth Group for Arts and Culture. Adolf Würth GmbH & Co. KG is a member of the Society of Friends of the Akademie der Künste.
