08/05 1st view!

13 to 19 August 2005, 10am to 12pm
1st view! (Kolumbastraße 4)
The Ground Floor of the New Building

A star pulls behind it a blue lacquered cart filled with building blocks. It is intended as a “Portable Ocean”, a travelling sea. Art is able to create the unimaginable with the simplest means. Do we follow the star … where am I? Invisible doves fly across the exhibition space as wind blows through the walls and daylight falls in softly. A building made up of different time periods: is it a church, a ruin, a monument or a museum? The building created on the basis of the plans of the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor respects all the existing fragments of the two thousand year old architectural history of this location in Cologne’s city centre. The new building for the art museum of the Archbishopric of Cologne develops upon the wartime ruins of the late Gothic church of Saint Kolumba. It embraces in its core a gem of the 1950s: the chapel “Madonna in the Ruins”, which was built in 1949 according to a design by Gottfried Böhm. One can experience one of the densest archaeological zones of Europe as well as the remains of Roman houses, the foundations of several antecedent churches and modern burial vaults all in one and the same space. After three years of building works the shell of the almost finished building is accessible for the first time for World Youth Day. Some of the collection’s works are already in place: One can hear the synchronicity of the past and presence in Bill Fontana’s sound installation “Pigeon Soundings” recorded in 1994. “. In the future museum foyer a painting of a Baroque church interior questions the ability of paintings to evoke memories. – Let us follow the star! The new building and Kolumba’s art collection preserve the role of the church as cultural guardian and lead it into the future with the help of today’s technology.