Thanks to some friendly advice, I visited the Museum Für Moderne Kunst (I thought it was called the “Kunst” at first, but then I realized “Kunst” translates to art – it’s the modern art museum). I’d never seen art by Thomas Bayrle before, and I liked what they had there.

They also had this light fixture/floor mat combo, you’d walk by in this one region and you step on this mat, but the mat is connected to this light that’s a few feet away and it turns it on/off depending on if you are stepping on it or not. I was confused for a second. I liked that. The third floor at the Kunst (lol) is really the best. James Turrell’s “Twilight Arch” was cool too.

James Turrell makes art out of light. The craft of his art is in contextualizing the way in which people experience light in space. In Turrell’s piece Twilight Arch, the viewer first enters a dark room. As her eyes gradually adjust to the darkness, she perceives a faint blue square on the far wall. When she approaches this blue square, she realizes it’s not a blue painting hanging on a wall, but rather a square hole cut through the wall, opening onto another room bathed in blue light.

I also visited Schirn Kunsthalle for the E.W. Nay exhibit, with paintings from his last few years of life. I didn’t know much about him before visiting this exhibit, I would have probably liked it more if I knew what his art looked like throughout his life (which I later saw when I went home, via the internet). But I liked…

His three major large-scale works, each measuring 4 x 4 meters and unusually exhibited – hanging from the ceiling – at the Documenta III, Kassel in 1964 initiate a heated debate in the press.

They were hangin’ from the ceiling at the Schirn as well, as described.