Kestner Gesellschaft (Kestner Society) is an art institution in Hanover, Germany, founded in 1916 to promote the arts. It is one of the largest art associations (German: Kunstvereine) in Germany. The halls of the Goseriedebad, which once housed an indoor swimming pool, regularly host extensive group and solo exhibitions.
In 1916, with World War I raging, the Kestner Gesellschaft was founded by citizens of Hanover, among them Hermann Bahlsen, August Madsack and Fritz Beindorff. The new association was named after the Hanover diplomat, art historian, and archaeologist August Kestner (1777–1853). The aim of founding a second art association in Hanover was to keep pace with modernism and bring the international avant-garde to Hanover. Soon after it was founded, artists such as Wassily Kadinsky, El Lissitzky, Käthe Kollwitz, and Kurt Schwitters exhibited at the Kestner Gesellschaft.
Under the first director, Paul Küppers, and his wife Sophie Küppers, the Kestner Gesellschaft established itself as a place for cultural exchange. The first exhibition representing the starting point for this concept in 1916 consisted of Max Liebermann's new work. Küppers stated at the time that the aim was to present artworks which "do not simply function as a relaxing amusement but instead have a stimulating and – if necessary – provocative and scandalizing effect".
Alexander Dorner , who served as director from 1923 to 1924, also maintained close contacts with the international art scene. The influential exhibition organizer redefined the modern understanding of spaces for art and developed new ideas in art education.
In 1936, the Kestner Gesellschaft was closed under pressure from Hitler's Nazism. The director at the time, Justus Bier, a Jew, presented artists Erich Heckel, Gerhard Marcks, Christian Rohlfs and August Macke – artists who were featured in the notorious Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich only one year later. Soon after the war, the new Kestner Gesellschaft was opened in the Warmbüchenstraße in 1948 by Hanoverians with service to the public in mind, among them Hermann Bahlsen, Wilhelm Stichweh, Bernhard Sprengel and Günther Beindorff, the director of the company Pelikan.
After World War II, Alfred Hentzen took over the management in 1947, followed by Fritz Schmalenbach . The new beginning for the Kestner Gesellschaft was faced with major challenges: The former building at Königstrasse 8 was destroyed, and a new location had to be found. In 1948 it was possible to reopen the institution in the exhibition spaces on Warmbüchenstrasse. In the decades that followed, the Kestner Gesellschaft grew into an international player in the art scene, thanks to pioneering exhibitions with Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Sol LeWitt, Eva Hesse, Andy Warhol, and Rebecca Horn, among others. In the early 1970s the facilities were greatly expanded, but soon even these exhibition spaces could no longer accommodate the art. Most importantly, the building lacked the technical infrastructure for modern exhibitions.
In 1997 the Kestner Gesellschaft moved to a Jugendstil building in the center of Hanover which once housed an indoor swimming pool. The building was renovated according to a design by the Hanover architects Koch Panse and was awarded the BDA Prize that same year. Since then, the Kestner Gesellschaft has shown contemporary art across over 1,300 square meters of exhibition space. There have been solo exhibitions by Thomas Ruff, Santiago Sierra, Barbara Kruger, Alex Katz, Karla Black, and Goshka Macuga, among others.
The institution hit the headlines in 2005 when it exhibited a mud house created by Spanish artist Santiago Sierra featuring a room with mud floor reminiscent of Hanover's Maschsee, an artificial lake.
From 2015 to 2019, institution’s first female director was Christina Végh. In 2017, the third edition of the collection Made in Germany , which is collectively curated on a five-year-cycle by the three institutions Kestner Gesellschaft, Kunstverein Hannover and Sprengel Museum Hannover, took place. Under the heading "Produktion. Made in Germany Three", the exhibition focused on the conditions of producing art in Germany. As participating institutions, the Schauspiel Hannover, the Festival Theaterformen, and the KunstFestSpiele are contributing the first time.
Adam Budak was the director of the Kestner Gesellschaft between 2020 and 2024. Budak developed a wide-ranging curatorial program centered on themes such as tenderness, anabasis, and amor mundi. [1] His approach emphasized critical intimacy, performative space, and interdisciplinary dialogue. Highlights of his tenure include solo exhibitions by Roger Hiorns, Rebecca Ackroyd, Samson Young, Klára Hosnedlová, and Paula Rego, as well as group shows exploring the legacy of El Lissitzky and the political thought of Hannah Arendt. His directorship marked a period of increased international visibility for the institution, including its first participation in the Venice Biennale [2] and the receipt of the Dezeen Architecture Award for the Paula Rego exhibition. [3] Locally, Budak strengthened ties with Hannover’s cultural scene through partnerships with institutions such as the Staatsoper, Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien, and the Bund Bildender Künstlerinnen und Künstler. He also initiated structural and social innovations, including the Café Tender Buttons, a curated Bookshop, the Cinémathèque helping to open the institution to a broader and more diverse public.
Eva Birkenstock is the new Director from August 2025.
The list of artists whose works have been exhibited during the 75-year history – excluding the years of closure – reads like a "Who's Who" in the history of 20th- and 21st-century art, among them Paul Klee (1920), Wassily Kandinsky (1923), El Lissitzky (1923) and Kurt Schwitters (1924), both friends of the Kestner Gesellschaft, Joan Miró (1952, 1956, 1989), Jean Dubuffet (1960), Marcel Duchamp and Horst Janssen (1965), Pablo Picasso (1973, 1993), Wolf Vostell (1977), Andy Warhol (1981 as his first retrospective in Germany, 2001) Jean-Michel Basquiat (1986 as the youngest at age 25, [4] 1989), Georg Baselitz (1987), Joseph Beuys (1975, 1990), Richard Prince (1991), Rebecca Horn (1978, 1991, 1997), Antoni Tàpies (1962, 1998), Jonathan Meese (2002), Thomas Ruff (2003), Peter Doig (2004), Rochelle Feinstein, (2016/17), James Richards, (2016/17) and Annette Kelm (2017).
In 1997, the Prime Minister of Lower Saxony, Gerhard Schröder, inaugurated the new facilities of the Kestner Gesellschaft at Goseriede 11. Simultaneously, the Munich Abendzeitung declared the remodelled exhibition facility "Germany’s most beautiful exhibition house." The remodelling of the former Goseriede Aquatic Center into an up-to-date exhibition house not only incorporates the high technical demands of modern exhibition operations but also preserves and showcases the Jugendstil features of this historic landmark. With its five halls on two levels, the house has at its command more than 1,500 square meters of exhibition surface.
From 1902 to 1905 the Hanoverian chief city architectural commissioner, Carl Wolff, oversaw the construction of the Goseriede Aquatic Center. The middle section of the public bathing facility was destroyed in 1943 during the Second World War, and later rebuilt from 1947 to 1953. After the reopening, the pool remained in use until 1982. In the same year, the city placed the beautiful Jugendstil façade under protection as a monument. In 1990 the Madsack publishing company purchased the building, offering the sections of the former women's pool area, entrance hall and all adjoining rooms to the Kestner Gesellschaft for its use. An international architectural competition was launched in 1992 in search of an innovative design for the space with the support of the Norddeutsche Landesbank. Chaired by Prof. Peter P. Schweger, the jury awarded the first prize to the Hanoverian architects Kai-Michael Koch, Anne Panse and Christian Hühn. In collaboration with the curators of the Kestner Gesellschaft, their design was developed further into an elegant and dynamic amalgamation of modern architectural elements. The prize of the Association of German Architects of the State of Lower Saxony was awarded to the building in 1998.
Each of the five halls at Kestner Gesellschaft has its own unique dimensions and atmosphere. Able to accommodate diverse exhibition concepts, the spaces can be transformed with high-tech equipment including a close-meshed and invisible network of electrical connections in the floors, walls and ceilings. The lateral galleries in the Halls II and III can be closed off to create smaller exhibition spaces. The total of twelve entrances into the Claussen Hall may be used to create different orientations of projects and viewers. In planning for the building renovations, care was also taken to create the necessary infrastructure for the careful transport and handling of artworks to and within the halls, with direct access to the exhibition spaces via loading dock. Due to ceiling-high gates on the ground- and upper-floors along with a large elevator, pieces arrive safely and easily into the exhibition halls.
Since 2003, Kestnereditions are being released related to every exhibition. The works, which include graphic art, photography and other art forms, are offered exclusively for members of the Kestner Gesellschaft in limited editions.
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