Kunstsammlungen Ruhr-Universität Bochum: Museum of modern and contemporary art

From post-war modernism to contemporary art

Two years after the Ruhr-Universität Bochum was founded, the art critic Albert Schulze-Vellinghausen bequeathed his collection of gestural-abstract and constructive-concrete art to the university, with works by Josef Albers, Sam Francis, Cy Twombly, Al Helden and others. This foundation of the Modern Art Collection has been continuously expanded since then and continued into the present day. Thanks to a generous grant from Paul Dierich, works of art by Alberto Giacometti, George Rickey, Richard Serra, Frank Stella, Günther Uecker and others were acquired in the mid-1970s. In the 1990s, the collection was enriched by photographs by Bernd and Hilla Becher, Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Thomas Struth and others, as well as works by Gerhard Richter, Bruce Nauman and Christian Boltanski. In the 2000s, following successful exhibitions, works by Imi Knoebel, James Turrell, Franz Erhard Walther, Katharina Grosse and many younger artists were added.
Today, around 1,000 works of art from the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art are shown in changing collection presentations, commented on, updated and reflected upon through thematic exhibitions and artistic interventions.

Architecture and art, antiquity and modernity in dialog

From a historical distance, the art collection, like the architecture of the university, bears witness to the once forward-looking attitude of the young Federal Republic of Germany. Works of art, architecture and art-in-building recall the international modernism of the 1960s and 1970s and relate it to the present.

The interplay between antiquity and modernism, post-war modernism and contemporary art, art and architecture provides visitors with exciting insights into a vivid history of art.