The Art and its Audience

New forms of communication, reception and participation via digital and social media have presented public art museums with the challenge of developing new ideas to attract and integrate today’s audiences. What do visitors expect of museums? Who exactly are their potential visitors and in what public spheres are museums actively involved? The usual canon of working methods at museums – i.e. collecting, preserving, researching, exhibiting and educating – is being put to the test. For the past two decades, museums in Great Britain and the United States have been busy developing new strategies of “audience development”. With its project “The Art and Its Audience”, the Lehmbruck Museum would like to tie into these findings and explore such subjects as audience contact, participation and sustainability.

These issues will present themselves in connection with the exhibition “The European Experiment. Constant and the European Avant-garde 1950-1960”. The fellow participated as a curator in the exhibition on the Dutch artist and work to develop new forms of presentation. She was responsible for drawing up a programme for the exhibition which specifically focused on testing new formats of audience contact. A concluding symposium served to reflect on and documented the results of the fellowship.