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Marl

Skulpturenmuseum Marl

Seit 30. April im Übergangsquartier

Please note that the Skulpturenmuseum Marl is currently relocating and is closed. From 30 April, the museum will be showing an exhibition of works by the artist Christian Odzuck. The temporary accommodation is in the Martin Luther King School (Georg-Herwegh-Straße 67, Marl-Hüls).


As a transparent exhibition centre, the Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten Marl displays sculptures from the fields of both Classic Modernism and contemporary art – not only within the museum itself, but also within the urban space.

For those visiting Marl for the first time, the museum can be somewhat difficult to find. This is because, in Marl, it's a little harder to tell where art stops and the town starts. The Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten building is somewhat concealed, situated under the meeting wing of the town hall, next to the large flight of steps leading to the registry office.

 

Visible to Everyone

Founded in 1982, the Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten – "Glaskasten" being German for "glass box" – very much lives up to its name, with all of the exhibition space being completely surrounded by large, glass surfaces. Here, the exhibits on 20th century art, Classic Modernism and contemporary art are not hidden behind metre-thick walls. Instead, they are transparently and deliberately displayed out in the open, visible to passers-by in the street. The collection includes works from Auguste Rodin, Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti and Wolf Vostell, among others, as well as from contemporary artists such as James Turrell, Bogomir Ecker, Felix Droese and Isa Melsheimer.

Another way in which the Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten can be recognised from the street is thanks to the writing which spells out "Les Fleurs du Mal" – part of an installation from Düsseldorf-born artist Mischa Kuball. The letters are lit up at night, meaning that they can always be read. The installation also includes a large concrete vase, placed at the bottom of the flight of stairs and which the residents of Marl are encouraged to fill with flowers.

 

Sculptures and Media Art

The museum's exhibits are not only limited to those which feature inside the Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten. Approximately 100 additional sculptures, from (Hans) Arp to (Ossip) Zadkine, have been placed around the local area which surrounds the architecturally striking town hall, the artificial City-See lake, and the town area as a whole. The closer you approach the Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten on foot, the higher the concentration of large sculptures to be discovered.

In 1990, another branch was added to the Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten in the form of the Paracelsus-Klinik. The collection which is housed there comprises around 50 20th-century works of art.

Electronic art also has a place in Marl. Every two years, the Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten awards the Marler Medienkunst-Preise series of awards – which consists of the Marler Videokunst-Preis and the EUROPEAN SOUNDART AWARD – to national artists who work with the media of video and sound. The prize winners are then presented in the museum in the form of an exhibition.

Events

19. March 2024
18:30
die insel VHS

As the law commanded us? Opportunities and limits of monument protection in Marl and NRW

A lecture by Dr Hans H. Hanke as part of the lecture series Baukultur in Marl

In Marl, there have been discussions in recent years about monument protection for buildings from the period after 1945. The town hall as well as the Scharoun and Marshall schools feature prominently. Some older buildings, on the other hand, have been added to the city's list of historical monuments quite unanimously and silently. Such approval or rejection of listed buildings arises from "public awareness". This should not be confused with the legally formulated "public interest" of protecting and maintaining architectural testimonies to the history of the city and the country. The terms complement each other. Using the example of some architectural monuments in Marl and comparable objects in other places, we will show how the legal protection of monuments has developed over time within the framework of the public interest and public awareness. Last but not least, the occasion, history, structure and responsibilities of state monument protection will also be discussed.
Dr. Hans H. Hanke, historian and monument conservator, was a scientific consultant for the LWL monument conservation, landscape and building culture in Westphalia from 1992 to 2022. He has been a lecturer in the Department of Art History at the Ruhr University Bochum since 1995. He is the author of numerous publications on architecture and urban development in the Ruhr region.

© Jürgen Metzendorf

18. April 2024
18:30
die insel VHS

Hans Scharoun in Marl

A lecture by V.-Prof. Dr Alexandra Apfelbaum as part of the lecture series Baukultur in Marl

Alongside the Geschwister-Scholl-Gymnasium in Lünen, the school on Westfalenstraße in Marl (1964 - 1970) is one of the only two school buildings realised by architect Hans Scharoun. He developed the building for the then new Drewer-Süd housing estate according to the principles of organic architecture based on its internal requirements. The centre of the complex is the large assembly hall, which was built at the same time as Scharoun's famous Berlin Philharmonic Hall and is characterised by its outstanding acoustics. After being threatened with demolition, the school was preserved with the help of an initiative and was renovated between 2010 and 2015. The lecture is dedicated to the architect Scharoun and sheds light on his path to the Ruhr region and Marl and places this special school building in the context of his overall oeuvre and contemporary architecture.
V.-Prof. Dr Alexandra Apfelbaum is a freelance art and architectural historian. Since 2018, she has held the deputy professorship for the history and theory of architecture and the city at Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts. She is also co-founder and chairwoman of the ruhrmoderne e.V. initiative. She specialises in research on the interfaces between architecture and art in the 20th century, with a focus on North Rhine-Westphalia and the post-war period. She has also curated and published numerous exhibitions and publications on architects and their work.

23. May 2024
18:30
die insel VHS

Architecture in the GDR

A lecture by Dipl.-Ing. Steffen Hering as part of the lecture series Baukultur in Marl

In the GDR, as in West-Germany, architecture began after the Second World War with the reconstruction of the destroyed cities. After East Berlin with the Stalinallee, it continued in the typical Ulbricht/Stalin architectural style in other major cities of the GDR. From 1953, the first new socialist city east of Berlin was built, Stalinstadt, later Eisenhüttenstadt. This is a good example of the development of residential buildings in the GDR - the quantity of new flats was never sufficient and the quality of the building fabric was constantly declining. Other new urban transformations followed in Schwedt, Hoyerswerda, Halle Neustadt and many new housing estates in the prefab style. Hering presents interesting museums, restaurants, cinemas, theatres and cultural centres, sports facilities, public authorities, television towers and high-rise buildings as well as industrial buildings.
Herbert Müller from Halle an der Saale and Ulrich Müther from Binz on Rügen developed internationally recognised concrete structures. Hering also looks at the careers of other important architects in the GDR. What did not achieve architectural excellence were owner-occupied homes. Some of the valuable building fabric was irretrievably lost. Shortly before the total collapse of the old town neighbourhoods, adapted reconstruction with prefabricated building elements was carried out in a few places after demolition. Hering goes into detail about such architecture in his home town of Quedlinburg. A number of prefabricated blocks in the new housing estates were demolished after reunification or lowered by a few storeys. Every visitor to the GDR will have perceived the building fabric as predominantly outdated, poorly maintained, grey and dirty. It was exemplary that what is so-called public property does not belong to anyone and the private owners either had no money or no materials to repair it. In most cases, there was a lack of both.
Dipl.-Ing. Steffen Hering was born in the GDR and is a passionate lover of architecture.

© Streetlab

11. June 2024
18:30
die insel VHS

Tactical Urbanism: Opportunities and Problems - Problems and Opportunities

A talk by Prof. Dr. Susanna Schaller within the lecture series Baukultur in Marl

In her 2016 book "Street Fight", New York's former transportation chief describes tactical urbanism as guerrilla urbanism, even if it was strategically developed by the city government to counteract opposition to certain interests and "obsolete thinking," that stood in the way of the mobility transition and the restructuring of public space stood in the way of overcoming. The city sed inexpensive materials such as green paint, mobile street furniture and tubs of plants in order to withdraw the street from car traffic in order to give people a place to stay back. This transformation has worked in large parts of the city by overcoming opposition. In this way, the city gave impetus to a new era of traffic planning. Tactical urbanism can also be used as a methodology for “participatory” planning to activate citizen engagement in the design of urban life. However, since privileged private actors with time, resources and a political network are often committed to reshaping the city, one also has to face the problem of which goals are being pursued and how a city government reacts when people get involved in shaping city life independently without official sanctions intervene to stop gentrification, for example.
Prof. Dr. Susanna Schaller is Associate Professor of Urban Studies and Planning at the City University of New York. Raised in Cologne and moved to Washington, D.C. as a teenager. emigrated, Schaller brings a double perspective to her research a. Her book, Business Improvement Districts and the Contradictions of Placemaking: BID Urbanism in Washington, D.C. (University of Georgia Press, 2019) shows how the 1990s saw a new public-private partnership regime and targeted place-making Strategies (such as tactical urbanism and creative placemaking) emerged to upgrade and gentrify areas of the city. She has published her research in international academic journals such as Urban Studies, Urban Affairs Review, Journal of Urban Affairs, Urban Geography, Journal of Planning Education and Research and the Journal of Education Policy.

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