In 1993 Ingwil Götz opened an art gallery in Munich, whose collection features contemporary art with an emphasis on topics such as reflection, politics and social criticism. In addition to painting, graphics, photography and installations, the gallery and its owner are focused on media art: video art, films, etc. Frau Goetz is interested in those that cannot be called mainstream: it is believed that she can read between the lines and see the talent of those artists who are called strange or even outsiders.
The owner of the gallery, in addition to having the unofficial title of one of the most successful collectors of contemporary art in the world, is also famous for her charitable work. Ingwil is the eldest child of entrepreneur Werner Otto. You've probably seen OTTO catalogs more than once, where you can order anything from beds and ladders to flowers and lipstick. Otto's family is one of the richest in Germany, and her father's inheritance helped Ingwil do what she liked. In her youth, she wanted to become an artist, but, as she herself admits, “very soon realized that others were superior to her in this area,” and founded a publishing house, and then began to collect works of art.
The collection of her museum today numbers more than 5,000 works, and the gallery building itself is hidden from view by a high wall-fence, and you can get there only by appointment. So, most likely, if you are passing through Munich and want to look at one of the first buildings of Herzog & de Meuron, then you better take care of the admission to the gallery in advance. On the positive side, the visit will be free. From not so good - if you do not have armor, then do not comfort yourself with the hope of seeing at least the facade: only trees are visible from behind the wall-fence.
This, at first glance, undemocratic nature is very easy to explain: the museum is located on a private plot of Frau Goetz, where she herself lives. Her house is located literally a stone's throw from the gallery, among birches and conifers.
Why Ingwil Götz chose at that time not yet famous architects for such a significant project for her as her own gallery is difficult to say: she herself does not talk about it. I think it was a flair for talent, which more than once helped her to see real "diamonds" in still unknown artists.
The area where the gallery is located is mainly built up with private houses and villas, and there are strict restrictions on the height of buildings. At the time of construction, which took place in 1991-1992, Frau Götz's collection was already quite voluminous and required a lot of space. For this reason, the project of the gallery assumed the presence of a basement there. Herzog and de Meuron took this need into account, but at the same time made it so that videos, paintings and drawings, which would be logical to place in the plinth, were, on the contrary, evenly distributed on different tiers. As a result, there are three exhibition halls on the top floor, and the main hall is located on the basement level. Walls from 4 to 5.5 meters high are finished with “rough plaster”; through the stripes of frosted glazing above, without glare, light passes inward. The architects tried to create a sense of a single space in all the halls so that the visitor "could not determine which floor he is on."
It sounds, of course, very conceptual and romantic, but since the visitor starts the examination of the exposition from the basement and, like it or not, uses the stairs, then, of course, the difference is palpable. In addition, on the top floor, even through a very small strip of frosted glazing, incomparably more light enters the halls than into the dark basement space.
The gallery building, in fact, is two volumes, containers, if you like, standing on top of each other. Materials smoothly replace each other: frosted glass turns into wood, and then into untreated aluminum, which again flows into frosted glass. It would seem that everything is very simple, but the effect is amazing. From certain angles, there is a feeling of a volume floating between two light strips.
Herzog & de Meuron has always been able to emphasize the properties of materials favorably. Due to this, the Goetz gallery looks absolutely differently at different times of the day and in different weather, in one season or another. The building can disappear, leaving two luminous stripes, mimic the environment, float in the air. I was in the gallery at different times of the day, in different years, in winter and summer, and each time it gives completely different sensations. And this, unfortunately, is the case when you need to see everything with your own eyes: photographs do not convey the effect.
I would also like to touch upon my favorite topic of aging of buildings. I have already written more than once that most of them age ugly, decaying, going out of fashion, and so on. Gallery Goetz is unlikely to face the above: it is simple - ingenious simplicity, which time will only improve.
In addition to exhibition spaces, the gallery has a specially equipped storeroom, a library available upon request for researchers (in fact, it is very, very small and narrow-profile, mainly dedicated to the artists represented in the gallery) and an archive.
The plot on which the gallery is located, as I have already mentioned, also serves as a courtyard for Frau Götz's house. It is difficult to tell anything about it, since only simple concrete walls are visible behind the trees, but it is obvious that stylistically the gallery was supposed to become an organic continuation of this house, built in 1960.
I hope that when you come to Munich - for the first time or again - you will definitely find time to look behind the concrete fence of the Goetz Gallery, which you most likely would have passed by otherwise. Behind the high wall is the whole world with one of the most important private collections of the latest art, one of the first buildings of Herzog & de Meuron and the one and only Frau Goetz, thanks to whom all this exists.
