Baden-Württemberg is beginning to dismantle culture: pragmatic, but fatal

Protests are already hailing. Understandable, because it is bitter news that the state of Baden-Württemberg announced these days: The Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, an important address for contemporary art for more than a hundred years, must stop working. When director Çağla Ilk’s contract expires at the end of April, no new team will be allowed to compete.

Instead, the Badisches Landesmuseum will move in when Karlsruhe Castle is renovated – “interim”, as the art ministry says. But when a museum is completely renovated using post-war technology, especially in a baroque palace, then you know that it will take years.

Eckart Köhne, the director of the Baden State Museum, can breathe a sigh of relief that those responsible have now found an alternative home. But their signal is fatal. Because even if the Karlsruhe historical exhibitions also focus on the present, politics is ignoring current art.

Instead of promoting exchange and social interaction with a diverse range of cultural offerings in these hostile times, the green-black state government is probably only committed to its prestigious flagships.

Çagla Ilk rightly complains in an open letter that with the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden an important place for art and democracy education is being lost. But the truth is also: The program, which she conceived with Misal Adnan Yıldız from Berlin, sometimes on the side, may have triggered “controversial contemporary discussions”, but the general public did not take it into account. They prefer to go to the private Frieder Burda Museum next door – and at best, come over to the Kunsthalle for a coffee.

However, cultural institutions should also be allowed to fail. But Çagla Ilk, of all people, who curated one of the best contributions to this year’s Art Biennale in the German Pavilion in Venice, is partly to blame for the sell-out of the Kunsthalle.

As pragmatic as the Baden-Baden interim solution may seem, in fact it is a dismantling of culture that Baden-Württemberg is ushering in. Contemporary art has never had a good status here, and now that seems to be politically desired. As has recently become known, the Stirling building of the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart also urgently needs to be renovated.

That is why the newly renovated art building will not be used for current formats and special exhibitions, but will instead be used as an “interim” for the more prestigious flagship Staatsgalerie for many years.