On the Value of Time New Presentation of the Collection of Contemporary Art

The Museum Ludwig collection includes the most important artists of the twentieth century and contemporary art. The works of modernism and art from 1945 to 1970 are arranged chronologically from the uppermost to the middle floor. The contemporary art in the stairwell and on the basement level forms the backbone and foundation of the museum, looking into the past and the future. At the same time, the collection presents the diverse media and conceptual manifestations of contemporary art, which do not follow a firmly established canon and cannot be categorized into styles.

Every two years the Museum Ludwig presents a new selection of contemporary art from its collection. This edition will focus on different concepts of time and ways in which artists handle the topic in their work. Many artists draw attention to the fact that art is experienced in the present, while also questioning memory, remembrance, and historiography. The presentation is framed by “value of time” as a concept—a socially determined value on which abstract, quantifiable time is based.

The starting point is Walter Benjamin’s haunting image from 1940 of the “angel of history,” with which he described the relationship between past, present, and future. This established the concept of a critical historiography that originates from economic parameters. Various facets of this concept are reflected by the exhibited works, in which temporality takes effect, the past is reflected in its relationship to the present, and future events are anticipated.