Bonner Kunstverein is awarded the ADKV-ART COLOGNE Prize for Art Associations 2022

In 2022, the ADKV-ART COLOGNE Prize for Art Associations was awarded again for the first time since the Corona pandemic. This brought the social and societal moment that characterises the structure of an art association more into focus: the mediation and promotion of contemporary art as well as the inclusive debate about its significance for today. The Bonner Kunstverein delivered outstanding results in this regard. In recent years, the director Fatima Hellberg, together with the team and the board, has intensively dealt with the association's self-image as a host and how the feeling of "warmth, informality and inclusiveness" that ideally characterises such a house can be generated even more strongly than before, especially at events. By placing special emphasis on the care in addressing and staging all programmes, this was achieved to a high degree - which not least led to the association being able to increase its membership to over 1000 for the first time in thirty years.

Exemplary was the examination of its own institutional role in the two-part exhibition "The Holding Environment", which dealt cross-thematically and self-reflexively with questions of "institutional critique and care"; the retrospective of the Filipino artist David Medalla was awarded "Special Exhibition of the Year 2021" by the AICA. Like many art associations, the Bonner Kunstverein is struggling with structural underfunding; its exhibition activities are entirely dependent on raising third-party funds. To realise a programme like this under the given conditions is to be honoured in a special way. By awarding this year's ADKV-ART COLOGNE Prize 2022 to the Bonner Kunstverein, the jury therefore acknowledged the high level of commitment of the management, team and board and offers its warmest congratulations.

Members of the 2022 jury were: Berit Gerd Andersen (Head of DA, Kunsthaus Kloster Gravenhorst), Regina Barunke (art historian, Cologne), Eva Birkenstock (Director Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen), Valerie Knoll (curator, Bern), Vanessa Joan Müller (curator and author, Vienna)

The prize was awarded together with the ADKV-ART COLOGNE Prize for Art Criticism.