When normal residents in normal towns have the chance to commission internationally renowned artists to create an artwork according to their wishes, there is absolutely nothing normal about it – neither for the residents, nor the artists. The New Patrons programme, established in 2017, taps the creative power of artists to strengthen civic commitment, solidarity and a sense of community. Alexander Koch, the curator and director of the New Patrons association, describes how such projects arise and grow in his article "In Every Project Dwells At Least One Citizen" (Magazine 34, 2020). He contemplates fundamental issues, such as "Who gets to determine what artworks are displayed locally?" and "Who and what should and can be represented?"
The Lenbachhaus in Munich is home to a unique collection of works by the artist group Blue Rider, now an established part of our shared European cultural heritage. Our programme Global Museum was a welcome opportunity for the museum to examine this famous group of artists for the first time in the context of artist collectives which existed elsewhere in the world around 1900. In an interview entitled "A Different Shade of Blue Rider" (Magazine 29, 2017), the director of the Lenbachhaus, Matthias Mühling, explained how this approach has expanded the Westernised view of modernism, but also underscored the necessity to recalibrate curatorial practice.
Digitalisation has inexorably pervaded the arts, artistic production and art reception. Magazine 33 (2019) highlighted artistic practices which explored the interface between the analogue and digital spheres. While the publisher and author Nikola Richter compiled an impressive compendium of the latest digital literature in her piece "Disrupt and Transmit", the radio journalist Martina Seeber’s article "The Sound of Ones and Zeroes" shed light on how digital technology has transformed the work of composers and musical production in recent years. In a conversation entitled "The Google Instinct" (Magazine 37, 2021), the sociologist Elena Esposito and Cosima Terrasse of the artists’ collective Laokoon discussed the new cultural techniques that are needed today. Together, they discussed approaches for technical and political interventions based on Laokoon’s artistic data experiment "Made to Measure", in which they reconstructed a person’s entire recent history based solely on their digital footprints online.
