What motivates people to collect art? In the best case scenario, it is passion! In the mid-1980s, Maximilian and Agathe Weishaupt began building a collection while maintaining close personal contact with artists and gallery owners. Today, this collection comprises numerous high-calibre works of international contemporary art and has rarely been shown in public. The collection's profile was shaped by an enthusiasm for artistic forms of expression characterised by a tendency towards reduction.

The presentation at the Kunstmuseum Ahlen was developed in close collaboration with Agathe Weishaupt, who continues to manage the collection after her husband's death in 2018. Thematic rooms, for example on manifestations of light, art of the 1950s and 1960s, or the principle of folds, alternate with artist rooms by Camill Leberer and David Nash. New discoveries such as the meditative, austere works of Korean artists meet stars of the art scene such as Sean Scully and Sol LeWitt. For the first time, several artistic works by Maximilian Weishaupt are also on display. Influenced by his experience as an architect, Weishaupt not only focuses intensively on spaces, geometric bodies, and surfaces, but has also woven the element of “time” into his works. 

The exhibition impressively reflects the diversity of artistic means of expression and the essential questions of international contemporary art.

We would like to thank the Maximilian and Agathe Weishaupt Collection, Munich.

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