"Mickey Mouse equals pancakes equals Kasper König."
(Claes Oldenburg, notes January 1965 to July 1966)

Kasper König, the influential exhibition organizer, museum director and university professor, has died.

As a pioneering independent curator and active mediator between various poles of the contemporary art system, he was an exceptional figure in the international art world.

In 1966, at the age of 23, he coordinated the first European solo exhibition of his artist friend Claes Oldenburg at the Moderna Museet Stockholm from New York under the direction of Pontus Hultén. A second premiere, Andy Warhol's first European solo exhibition, followed at the same venue in 1968. Around the same time, he founded one of the most important alternative art spaces in Germany together with Konrad Fischer in Düsseldorf: the Galerie Konrad Fischer, which opened in 1967. Through König's mediation, numerous representatives of conceptual art and minimal art entered the Rhineland art scene at this unconventional exhibition venue in a converted gateway, including Carl Andre, Hanne Darboven, Bruce Nauman and Lawrence Weiner.   

König's network and his then already legendary New York address book also came in handy for Harald Szeemann when planning the exhibition “When Attitudes Become Form” at the Kunsthalle Bern (1969). When Szeemann put together his team for documenta 5 (1972), König was consequently also on the list of collaborators. However, he was able to successfully evade the Swiss artist's task of curating the “Individual Mythologies” section: Instead, König took over the project coordination of Claes Oldenburg's “ Mouse Museum”, for which he operated as the official museum director during documenta 5. König's other (unrealized) alternative project proposals for documenta 5 concerned the conception of a wide-ranging postcard museum and the comprehensive presentation of works by the conceptual artist On Kawara (three decades before Okwui Enwezor exhibited works by the Japanese artist at documenta 11).

Kasper König was subsequently considered several times as a candidate for the Artistic Direction of documenta – but he was never appointed. The decision was probably particularly close in the run-up to documenta 8 (1987), when he – together with the art critic Laszlo Glozer as his close conceptual partner – lost out to the Dutchman Edy de Wilde. After the resignation of the designated dual leadership de Wilde/Szeemann, Manfred Schneckenburger finally took over as director of documenta 8.

During his long career, Kasper König held professorships at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and at the Städelschule in Frankfurt, which he headed as rector from 1989. Parallel to his time at the Städelschule, he directed the Portikus exhibition hall, which he founded in 1987, before moving to the Museum Ludwig in Cologne as director in 2000, where he worked until his “retirement” in 2012.

Among Kasper König's legacies in the history of art and exhibitions, the Skulptur Projekte Münster exhibition series initiated in 1977 together with Klaus Bußmann (1941-2019) is of particular importance: As a model case of site-specific working methods, the large-scale exhibition, which takes place every ten years, is one of the most important formats of contemporary art in public space worldwide. The sixth edition of Skulptur Projekte will take place in 2027: It will be the first exhibition without its co-founder and long-standing Artistic Director Kasper König.