Düsseldorf Quadriennale 06: Body as Theme Across the City

The first Düsseldorf Quadriennale, a new contemporary art festival, took place in autumn 2006 across multiple venues in the city, with a €5 million budget and the human body as its central theme. The festival presented a heterogeneous panorama including a major Caravaggio retrospective at Museum Kunstpalast, a Francis Bacon retrospective at K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, a Bruno Goller show at Akademiegalerie der Kunstakademie, Bruce Nauman videos at NRW-Forum Kultur und Wirtschaft, installations by Juan Muñoz at K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Teresa Margolles at Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, and a joint sculpture exhibition by Berlinde De Bruyckere and Martin Honert at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf. Margolles's work, using secretions from anonymous corpses, was noted for its shock therapy approach. Private galleries such as Martin Bochynek, Michael Cosar, and Konrad Fischer also mounted special programs. The festival aimed to revive Düsseldorf's status as a major art hub, which had declined since the 1990s relative to Berlin. Recent cultural policy efforts included new exhibition spaces funded by corporations, the city, and the state. The Kunstakademie Düsseldorf now counts Peter Doig, Rita McBride, and Tal R among its faculty, while artists like Paloma Varga Weisz, Christian Forsen, Manuel Graf, and Stefan Kürten live and work in the city. A new art fair, Düsseldorf Contemporary, was scheduled for April 2007.