Mission: Postmodern. Heinrich Klotz and the Wunderkammer DAM

Heinrich Klotz’s hitherto unpublished diary recordings were the starting point for marking DAM’s 30th anniversary by looking back over the turbulent years when the museum was established. Dictating to a tape recorder, Klotz described how from scratch he built up what is today one of the most renowned museum collections in an intense dialogue with the most important architects of the time – Frank Gehry, Hans Hollein, Rem Koolhaas, Richard Meier, Aldo Rossi, Denise Scott Brown, Robert Venturi and many others. The recordings also offer an insider’s view of the genesis of Frankfurt’s “Museumsufer”, its row of museums along the banks of the River Main. Deutsches Architekturmuseum was inaugurated on June 1, 1984 as the first new museum on the “Museumsufer”. Klotz had to fight a number of battles before taking his place in the new museum landscape, about which his diaries provide valuable information.

"Wunderkammer"

The “Wunderkammer” (cabinet of curiosities) featuring the most important works Klotz acquired between 1979 and 1989 is the focal point of the exhibition. It includes objects which would not tend to be associated with an architecture museum's collection, such as an oil painting by Martin Kippenberger and a collage by Christo. Klotz’ diary recordings have made it possible, for the first time, to tell the story “behind the objects”. One of the exhibition’s highlights is a 6 x 6-metre portal which Klotz managed to save from the most influential architecture exhibition of past decades – it was part of the “Strada Novissima” at the first Architecture Biennale, which took place in Venice in 1980 (portal design: Thomas Gordon Smith, USA).

Postmodern architecture

However, the subject of the exhibition will not only be individual objects but also the way they have been orchestrated as time has gone by. Accordingly, there will be a characteristic “booth” from the opening exhibition “Revising Modernism – postmodern Architecture from 1960 through 1980”. This exhibition was as controversial as postmodern architecture itself.

The fact that postmodern architecture was not only a different style of building but also describes the changed approach of many architects was expressed in Klotz’s formula: “The naked blocks of modern purpose-built architecture provoke imaginative and clichéd shapes in response.”

Postmodern architecture has shaped Frankfurt to a greater extent than any other city in Germany – Schirn Kunsthalle, Messeturm, the buildings on Saalgasse and Museum für Moderne Kunst are only a few examples dating from this period. However, postmodern architecture has also met with hostility. From today’s point of view, the basic approach Klotz called for, one of plurality, has prevailed – irony, pop motifs and historical quotations have long since become accepted in architecture.

Heinrich Klotz

Born in 1935, Heinrich Klotz first came into contact with postmodern architecture as a young visiting professor in Yale in 1969-70. He was a professor at the University of Marburg as of 1972. From 1979 he headed Deutsches Architekturmuseum. The Cologne-based architect Oswald Mathias Ungers was tasked with housing DAM in a villa dating from 1912. The latter’s conversion into the world’s first architecture museum with programmatically striking architecture elicited a strong global response. In 1989, Klotz moved to Karlsruhe where he established the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) and the Design Academy. Klotz died in Karlsruhe on June 1, 1999.

Dates.- 10 May –19 October 2014.
Venue.- Deutsches Architekturmuseum DAM, Frankfurt/Main, Germany.