Less than 30 years after Philip Johnson toured Nazi-occupied Poland as a journalist, he was awarded a commission to design an art museum in Bielefeld, a small city in northwest Germany. Kunsthalle Bielefeld was completed in 1968. The 4-story building was clad in red sandstone with a sculpture garden in the back.
For decades, the museum has been used for multimedia art installations, and housed pieces by Picasso, Max Beckmann, Paul Klee, and others. Caruso St John Architects, a London- and Zurich-based office, recently won a competition to renovate Kunsthalle Bielefeld. The firm beat out 44 other design teams for the job.
Caruso St John Architects has a budget of $52 million to carry out the refurbishment. The renovation will entail modernizing the building’s services, envelope, and interior fittings, the architects shared.
All in all, the goal is to bring Kunsthalle Bielefeld up to modern museum standards. Its renovation comes amid a reckoning with Johnson’s political legacy, and a broader conversation about how to negotiate his buildings in the present.
Bielefeld, Then and Now
Today, Kunsthalle Bielefeld is remembered as Philip Johnson’s only museum in Europe. Most of its construction costs were covered by Rudolf August Oetker, a food industry magnate who voluntarily served in the Waffen-SS during World War II. An investigative report from 2013 later found that Oetker’s food company played an important role for the Third Reich. The business was so productive, it was named a National Socialist Model Company in the 1930s. “The Oetker family and company were pillars of Nazi society, they sought proximity to the regime and profited from its policies,” the report said.
Philip Johnson took the commission to design Kunsthalle Bielefeld in the 1960s, not long after the dust settled from the FBI’s investigation into his fascist organizing. He was handpicked by Oetker and then director director Joachim Wolfgang von Moltke for the job.
Rudolf August Oetker, as chairman, said he wanted the art museum in Bielefeld to be named after his stepfather, Richard Kaselowsky. This renaming was met with stiff opposition because Kaselowsky was part of Himmler’s Circle of Friends and an active Nazi party member. Nevertheless, the motion was approved, and the building was formally titled Richard Kaselowsky Haus.
The unsavory figures looming behind the museum stirred unrest among locals. Once it became clear who was behind the project, musicians who had been hired to perform at its inauguration resigned out of protest, but it inevitably opened on September 27, 1968. In 1998, 30 years later, the city council of Bielefeld opted to rename the building from Richard Kaselowsky Haus to Kunsthalle Bielefeld due to Kaselowsky’s political leanings.
Johnson’s Legacy
In 2008, museum officials announced plans to rename the sculpture garden outside the building “Johnson Park” after its architect. But that didn’t happen, which was also due to Johnson’s participation in the fascist movement.
Today, Johnson’s handprint is still very visible at the museum, albeit in a critical manner: A bus shelter with Johnson’s face on it greets visitors when they walk inside. The kiosk was completed in 2018 by Dennis Adams, and is called Bus Shelter XII Shattered Glass / The Confessions of Philip Johnson. It features a portrait of Johnson from 1998 and 500 “confessions” made by Johnson himself where he vocalized his support for Nazism. The shattered glass is an obvious reference to Kristallnacht—a 1938 pogrom.
Despite a minor renovation in 2002, and the new bus stop outside, Kunsthalle Bielefeld hasn’t changed much since 1968. (Frank Gehry proposed a deconstructivist addition to the building in 1994, but that was vehemently stopped by Rudolf August Oetker’s wife, Maja. Sou Fujimoto designed a new wing for the museum in 2013, that didn’t happen either.)
Now, Caruso St John Architects will help expand the building’s educational facilities. Its operational processes will be improved to allow the museum to stay open when exhibitions are being swapped out with new ones. The firm will also design new back of house spaces, like offices, meeting rooms, social areas, and storage space.
As Caruso St John Architects embarks on the renovation, designers and community leaders around the world discuss how to work with Johnson’s legacy. In Madison, Connecticut, a town is divided over whether or not an estate Johnson worked on (for a client with Nazi ties) should be transformed into a museum.
Construction at Kunsthalle Bielefeld is expected to begin in 2025.
