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Retracing the history of the foundation of Frankurt’s Kunsthalle Portikus, Kasper König underlines its bounding with the wider cultural context of the city and the activities of Städelschule academy, of which he has been the director. Born at the time of the political movement of cultural renewal of the city, that had the intent of diversifying Frankfurt’s activities besides finance, Portikus is a research-oriented laboratory, which aims to make established theorists and artist discuss with the students, and which adjust every intervention regarding to the peculiarities of the space and historical time. The exhibition program, that the same König calls “a circus program”, dense and diverse on the verge of spectacularization, includes exhibitions, but also a varied kind of initiatives, events, workshops and conferences, music and cinema festivals which integrate with the educational program but also with the city’s public life, in a mutual growth dynamic. He sorts through the interventions of various artists, among them Dieter Roth, Ann and Bernhard Blume, Niele Toroni, Gerhard Dominig and Franz West, Allan McCollum, Nam June Paik, Gerhard Richter, Ayşe Erkmen and Andreas Slominski, Ettore Spalletti, Lawrence Wiener.

Kasper König (b. in Mettingen, Germany, 1943) Professor and scholar Honoris Causa, he was just 23 when he curated Claes Oldenburg’s exhibition at the Moderna Museet of Stockholm. In 1985 he became lecturer of the Academy of Fine Arts of Düsseldorf. Three years later, he accepted a chair in the Städelschule of Frankfurt, which he leaded from 1989 and 2000. In the same period he was Director and Founder of Portikus, an exhibition space in Frankfurt. König organized several big exhibitions, among them Westkunst at the Messehallen, of Cologne (1981); von hier aus at the Messe of Düsseldorf (1984) and Der zerbrochene Spiegel with Hans Ulrich Obrist in Wien and Hambourg (1993). With Klaus Bussmann he created and organized Skulptur Projekte Münster in 1977 and in the following editions (1987, 1997, 2007, 2017). From 2000 to 2012 he has been director of the Ludwig Museum of Cologne. He was also curator of Manifesta 10 in St. Petersburg (2014) and artistic director of the Skulptur Projekte Münster (2017).