Kunsthalle Bielefeld Pairs Its Collection With the KiCo Collection in ‘Willst du mit mir gehen?’

Kunsthalle Bielefeld opens the second part of its collection project ‘Geteilte Ansichten. Kunsthalle Bielefeld x Sammlung KiCo’, subtitled ‘Willst du mit mir gehen?’, on 17 October 2026. The exhibition remains on view until 21 February 2027 and places works from the museum’s own holdings side by side with loans from the private KiCo Collection.

The two collections start from different points. According to the Kunsthalle, its own collection is strongest in German Expressionism and in the American avant-garde of the 1960s, while the KiCo Collection concentrates on more recent contemporary art. What connects them is an interest in painting, space and abstraction, traced here from classical modernism to the present. By setting works against one another, the exhibition aims to open fresh perspectives on both, and it brings in artists who have so far been missing from the Bielefeld collection, among them Marcia Hafif, Katharina Grosse and Maria Lassnig. The museum also describes the project as a test case for how a museum might work in future, with an emphasis on cooperation, openness, sustainability and movement.

Lassnig’s ‘Füße’ (1987/89), from the KiCo Collection, serves as the key image for this second chapter. The roughly forty participating artists span more than a century and include Max Beckmann, Robert and Sonia Delaunay, László Moholy-Nagy, Man Ray, Willi Baumeister, Kenneth Noland, Blinky Palermo, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Charlotte Posenenske, Sheila Hicks, Senga Nengudi, Marlene Dumas, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Rosa Barba, Monica Bonvicini, Keren Cytter and Nevin Aladağ.

The exhibition is curated by Benedikt Fahrnschon and Laura Rehme. It opens on the evening of Friday 16 October with a video message from Ina Brandes, North Rhine-Westphalia’s minister for culture and science, followed by an introduction from Kunsthalle director Christina Végh and the two curators; admission that evening is free.

An accompanying programme runs through the autumn. Végh, Rehme and Fahrnschon each lead an after-work tour, on 21 October, 4 November and 2 December respectively, and on Saturday 28 November a family action day takes Sigmar Polke’s ‘Negativwert’ (1982) as its starting point for experiments with pigment. Public guided tours and children’s workshops are also scheduled.

The project receives support from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the Kulturstiftung Kunsthalle Bielefeld.