19 – 21 August 2017
Ten Years Kolumba – An (Almost) Empty House!
Open Sat 12am – 10pm / Sun + Mon 12am – 5pm

Admission free!

With Kolumba’s 10th birthday on the doorstep, it’s certainly time to celebrate! You’re invited to a „Kolumba Open“ weekend full of quite unusual exhibitions in almost empty rooms:
Swiss artist Eric Hattan, born in 1955, „individually“ explores the museum right on stage and behind the curtains. He focusses on systematic principles of arrangement and patterns of behaviour rather than on the architecture itself, probing the question of how underlying patterns and principles form and shape an institution like a museum and keep it alive. What, if we turned things upside down?
American composer Marek Poliks, born in 1989, is father to the „Interdictor“, an obvious reference to film saga „Star Wars“. As part of a work in progress, Poliks’ installation serves as base station of a sound machinery which resembles a spaceship on its voyage; the first performance is announced for next year’s Munich Biennale, a festival for new music theatre. The sight of the spaceship evokes a wide spectre of ambivalent emotions, promising both escape as well as departure to new worlds ahead ... .
And in the „Office for Eyes, Nose, Tongue, Mouth, Heart, Hand and Mask (which covers everything)“, a project by Kunsthaus KAT 18, staff will be very busy throughout the weekend: under the (artistic) management of Czech artist Eva Kot'átková, born in 1982, Nicole Baginski, Tanja Geiß, Patrick Henkel, Susanne Kümpel, Andreas Maus, Michael Müller, and Anna Rossa will join again for a number of small performances to take possession of the room they have created, thus adding a poetic dimension to the administrative work in progress.

As for the remaining rooms of the museum, we finally want to make good for what many visitors wished but missed at its opening in 2007: to take in the architecture (almost) without any works of art; the difference being that we may witness a kind of „musée sentimentale“ over three days by walking the empty rooms for their traces of the past ten years and to remember the various impressions and works of art which we have met there on our visits.

This long weekend also marks the finale of our one-year reflection „On the Individual“. Admission will be free during these days, and those interested in our publications are invited to browse and take their pick amongst a selection of discount books available at reception.
So, feel free to join in and celebrate with us!

Art museum of the
Archdiocese of Cologne