Current event

Monday, December 1, 2025, 7 p.m.
at the Museum Ludwig cinema

Art in Context #65
The Art of Costume and Personal Appearance


Lecture by artist Nick Mauss (in English) followed by a discussion with curators Achim Hochdörfer and Yilmaz Dziewior (in German)


Admission is free. We kindly request that you register in advance.

In his lecture Nick Mauss considers the "artist's costume" as a medium in and of itself and traces some of the exchanges – both on stage and off – among an intricate network of artists and dancers working in New York after World War II who discovered in costume a means for expanding the notion of what a body – and an artist – could be.

Nick Mauss (*1980 New York, USA) works at the interstices of mediums and their histories, catalyzing a new poetics of the archive through complex collaborations where the entire infrastructure of making exhibitions is treated through the lens of performance.

Achim Hochdörfer (*1968 Ulm, Germany) is director of the Museum Brandhorst in Munich. From 2001 to 2013, he was curator at the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig (mumok) in Vienna. During this time, he taught regularly at the Institute of Art History and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. In cooperation with the Ludwig Museum Cologne, he curated the exhibition Five Friends: John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly in 2025 together with Yilmaz Dziewior and Arthur Fink.

“Art in Context” is a lecture series of the Gesellschaft für Moderne Kunst am Museum Ludwig and is generously made possible by Flossbach von Storch SE.

With the kind support of Dorint Hotel am Heumarkt Köln and Wein- und Sektgut Reverchon.

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