HERE AND NOW at Museum Ludwig. And Yesterday and Tomorrow

Us­ing a fo­cused se­lec­tion of works, ma­te­rials, and texts, the here and now is re­lat­ed to yes­ter­day and to­mor­row. To ex­pe­ri­ence “here,” we turn our gaze to the ground on which the mu­se­um stands. What does the soil un­der our feet re­veal? How is “here” even defined when the tec­ton­ic plates we stand on move al­most as fast as our fin­ger­nails grow? What does the mu­se­um’s ad­dress at Bis­chofs­garten­s­trasse, which is to a great ex­tent sealed off from its sur­round­ings, re­fer to? 

With this in mind, Chargesheimer’s pho­to­graphs of basalt columns can be read as more than ab­s­tract black-and-white con­fig­u­ra­tions and Ger­hard Richter’s paint­ings of the Alps as re­min­ders of the cont­in­u­al fluc­tu­a­tions of the earth’s sur­face and hu­man ex­is­tence. Taci­ta Dean’s im­pres­sive work Saku­ra (Ta­ki I), the im­age of a thou­sand-year-old cher­ry tree whose sup­port­ed branch­es are in bloom, vi­su­al­izes the ephe­mer­al­i­ty of our per­so­n­al pre­sent. Like lay­ers of earth, the growth rings of trees can be con­sult­ed as na­t­u­ral­ly formed archives that speak of events and con­di­tions that ex­ist­ed be­fore our own me­m­ories be­gan. What will the fu­ture be like? Where can we find to­mor­row al­ready hint­ed at in our ter­re­s­trial here and now?

Be­low us, the Eurasian Plate, with all its stra­ta and faults, con­s­tant­ly shifts, ris­es, and sinks, while over­head, clouds, whose forms are in­ter­pret­ed by me­te­o­rol­o­gists to fore­cast the weather, move across the sky. His­tor­i­cal pho­to­graphs of im­pres­sive cloud for­ma­tions by Gus­tave Le Gray, Char­les Marville, and Al­fred Stieglitz are shown along­side sketch­es for a new plant­ing scheme de­vel­oped by land­s­cape ar­chi­tects ate­li­er le bal­to es­pe­cial­ly for the roof ter­race of the Mu­se­um Lud­wig. With that the Mu­se­um Lud­wig is re­spond­ing to the Bis­chofs­garten, an tenth-cen­tu­ry gar­den once lo­cat­ed on the pre­sent site of the mu­se­um. HERE AND NOW at Mu­se­um Lud­wig. And Yes­ter­day and To­mor­row tra­vers­es both the in­side of the mu­se­um and its roof, where vis­i­tors can sit in the new gar­den while watch­ing the clouds pass by.

Dur­ing its sev­en-month run, the ex­hi­bi­tion will be pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly re­con­fig­ured, with in­di­vi­d­u­al works changed to cre­ate new ensem­bles. This trans­for­ma­tion will be ac­com­panied by Yoko Ono’s song I Love You Earth, in which the artist ad­dress­es our plan­et with the line, “Y­ou are our turn­ing point in eter­ni­ty”. And Yes­ter­day and To­mor­row jux­ta­pos­es con­tem­po­rary works with his­tor­i­cal works and ac­tu­al land­s­cape ar­chi­tec­ture while sci­en­tif­ic fields such as ge­ol­o­gy, den­drol­o­gy, and archae­ol­o­gy play a vis­i­ble role.

Within the scope of this ex­hi­bi­tion, the Mu­se­um Lud­wig is co­op­er­at­ing with PD Dr. Silke Trömel, Uni­ver­si­ty of Bonn, In­sti­tute of Geo­s­ciences/ Dr. Alexan­der Kel­bch, Deutsch­er Wet­ter­di­enst, Of­fen­bach a.M./ Dr. Martin Sala­m­on, Ge­o­log­i­cal Sur­vey of North Rhine-West­phalia, Kre­feld/ Prof. Dr. Michael R. W. Am­ler und Ju­lia Friedel, In­sti­tute of Ge­ol­o­gy and Min­er­al­o­gy, Uni­ver­si­ty of Cologne/ Prof. Dr. Marieke van der Maat­en-The­u­nis­sen, In­sti­tute of For­est Growth and For­est Com­put­er Sci­ences, TUD Dres­den Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy/ Wup­per­tal In­sti­tute for Cli­mate, En­vi­ron­ment, and En­er­gy.

The First Cli­mate-Neu­tral Ex­hi­bi­tion:

And Yes­ter­day and To­mor­row is the Mu­se­um Lud­wig’s first de­mon­s­tra­b­ly cli­mate-neu­tral ex­hi­bi­tion. To conserve na­t­u­ral re­sources, the show runs for an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od of sev­en months. The use of en­er­gy-sav­ing LED il­lu­mi­na­tion en­sures a re­duc­tion in the over­all con­sump­tion of elec­tric­i­ty, which is sourced en­tire­ly from hy­dropow­er. Car­bon dioxide emis­sions have been low­ered by min­i­miz­ing loans and con­cen­trat­ing on works in the mu­se­um’s per­ma­nent col­lec­tion; any ne­ces­sary tran­s­por­ta­tion was un­der­tak­en in com­bi­na­tion with ship­ments for other pro­jects. As with Green Mod­er­nism: The New View of Plants (2022–23), our pi­lot pro­ject for a sus­tain­able ex­hi­bi­tion mod­el, print ma­te­rial has been kept to a min­i­mum and pro­duced us­ing min­er­al-free ink on pa­per cer­ti­fied by Blue An­gel. A re­port on pro­ject-re­lat­ed green­house gas­es will be pre­pared with the goal of of­fer­ing a de­mon­s­tra­b­ly de­car­bonized, cli­mate-neu­tral ex­hi­bi­tion pro­gram at the Mu­se­um Lud­wig in the long term. Our net ze­ro tar­get is not pos­si­ble with­out car­bon com­pen­sa­tion for un­avoid­able emis­sions. This com­pen­sa­tion sup­ports an en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion pro­ject in Ger­many. 

For further information see HERE AND NOW at Museum Ludwig. <br> And Yesterday and Tomorrow - Museum Ludwig, Cologne (museum-ludwig.de)