MEET ME AT THE VILLA!

KfW Stiftung's Art Collection

MEET ME AT THE VILLA! is the first comprehensive exhibition of KfW Stiftung’s art collection. From photography and film to painting and sculpture, from artistic research to practices informed by political activism, nineteen diverse artistic positions are presented across two floors. The Villa 102 serves as the backdrop – the upper-class residential building from 1912 is itself the keeper of its own eventful history. In dialogue between art and architecture, discursive perspectives on memory and history are made visible and tangible.

The artworks have a special connection to KfW Stiftung. Many of the projects were once conceived as part of the international funding programme. Some were even developed and purchased specifically for the Villa 102. Today, they are not only part of the collection, but also manifest processes of artistic production and cooperation. As different as their global contexts may be, their thematic similarities are surprising: How are collective memory and art practice connected? Is it possible to give history a form and what role does digitality play? KfW Stiftung’s collection explores and challenges existing social contexts. The exhibition is an invitation to engage with contemporary impulses. In this spirit: MEET ME AT THE VILLA!

With Salwa Aleryani, Orawan Arunrak, Vartan Avakian, Laurenz Berges, Gaëlle Choisne, Ahmed El Ghoneimy, Gladys Kalichini, Khvay Samnang, Hamlet Lavastida, Dan Lie, Talya Lubinsky, Stary Mwaba, Elia Nurvista, Andrés Pereira Paz, Matheus Rocha Pitta, Prajakta Potnis, Thabiso Sekgala, Nguyễn Thị Thanh Mai and Carla Zaccagnini. 

Audioguide
For the first time, the exhibition is accompanied by an audioguide. You can learn more about the artworks here. We recommend using the free Soundcloud App on your Smartphone.
Speaker: Nora Solcher, Audio production: Louisa Beck

Accompanying Programme:

Vernissage

Thursday I 11.09.2025 I 18:00-20:30 

The evening will begin with an welcome remarks by Bernd Loewen, Board of the KfW Stiftung.
This will be followed by a curatorial introduction by Daniela Leykam, the program director of art and culture.
Reception with music by  Febi  and Jaraya from GG Vybe.

Curator’s Tour with an Aperitif (in German) - fully booked, only waiting list
Tuesday I  07.10.2025 I 18:00-19:00 
Wednesday I 10.12.2025 I 18:00-19:00

Guided Tours (in German)
Sunday I 13.09.2025 I 16:00-17:00 
Thursday I 18.09.2025 I 18:00-19:00 
Thursday I 02.10.2025 I 18:00-19:00 
Thursday I 16.10.2025 I 18:00-19:00 
Saturday  I 25.10.2025 I 14:00-15:00 (focussing on the digital art in the exhibition, in english) 
Thursday I 30.10.2025 I 18:00-19:00  
Thursday I 13.11.2025 I 18:00-19:00
Saturday I 22.11.2025 I 16:00-17:00 - fully booked, a waiting list is set up
Saturday I 13.12.2025 I 16:00-17:00 
Thursday I 18.12.2025 I 18:00-19:00
Saturday I 03.01.2026 I 14:00-15:00 
Sunday I 11.01.2026 I 14:00-15:00

Podium Discussion

Thursday I 04.12.2025 I Admittance 18:30, Begin 19:00

ZwischenRäume
Perspectives on Collecting and Exhibiting Virtual Art

What changes when art is no longer tangible? What questions does virtual art pose for public spaces? And what does it mean for collecting and exhibiting?

As part of the exhibition of the KfW Stiftung’s collection, MEET ME AT THE VILLA!, Margit Rosen (Head of the Knowledge – Collection, Archives & Research Department at ZKM) and Ben Livne Weitzman (curator and co-founder of WAVA) will discuss the opportunities and limitations of digital art at the intersection of technology and society. Jeanne Charlotte Vogt (Artistic Director of the NODE Association for the Promotion of Digital Culture) will moderate the discussion.

The starting point is the collaboration between the KfW Stiftung and WAVA (wava.ar). For for MEET ME AT THE VILLA!, three works have been adapted for the virtual space. The artistic positions of Elia Nurvista, Khvay Samnang and Salwa Aleryani open up diverse perspectives on the value, memory and materiality of digital art.
ZwischenRäume is an invitation to rethink the value of the virtual.

Admission is free. Registration is required.

Biographies
Margit Rosen is an art historian and curator focusing on 20th and 21st century art, particularly the history and theory of electronic and digital arts. Since 2016, she has headed the Knowledge – Collection, Archives & Research department at the ZKM | Centre for Art and Media Karlsruhe. Her publications include A Little-Known Story About a Movement, a Magazine, and the Computer's Arrival in Art (MIT Press, 2011). She has taught at the Kunstakademie Münster, the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing, and the Università degli Studi di Milano, among others. She is also a member of the German UNESCO Cultural Committee and the nomination committee of the UNESCO programme “Memory of the World”.

Ben Livne Weitzman is a curator and writer. He is the co-founder of WAVA, a non-profit augmented exhibition platform. Ben earned his Master’s in Curatorial Studies from the Städelschule and Goethe University in Frankfurt, and his Bachelor’s degree from the Interdisciplinary Honours Program in the Humanities and the Arts at Tel Aviv University. As a curator, Ben manages the Crespo Foundation’s Glenkeen Garden artist-in-residence program in West Cork, Ireland, as well as its accompanying exhibition program, The Glenkeen Variations. Noteworthy exhibitions he has curated include Apparitions, the augmented expansion of the 36th Bienal de São Paulo (2025); The Orangerie (2024) and DEMO- (2023) in Frankfurt’s public space; After Nature (2025) and The Glenkeen Variations: ArtNature/NatureArt at the Crespo Open Space in Frankfurt; Framing Movements at the Suzanne Dellal Centre in Tel Aviv-Jaffa (2021, 2022, and 2024); and In-visible Realness at PS120 Gallery in Berlin (2019). An Editor-at-Large at PASSE-AVANT, Ben’s writings have appeared in various catalogues, publications, and magazines, including Arts of the Working Class, Ocula, Mousee, and Frieze.

Jeanne Charlotte Vogt is the chairperson and artistic director of Frankfurt's NODE Verein zur Förderung Digitaler Kultur e.V., a curator and a dramaturge working between media art, performance and cultural education. She believes in the transforming and mediating potential of artistic practices and uses her projects to create spaces for critical engagement with technologies trough artistic approaches. She has curated festivals and formats with institutions such as the Goethe-Institut, HAU Berlin, Kampnagel Hamburg, the Arts & Culture Track of the Chaos Communication Congress and was a scholarship holder at Villa Kamogawa, Goethe-Institut Japan. Together with the research project “Motion Bank”, founded by William Forsythe, she developed the internationally travelling interdisciplinary research format Choreographic Coding Lab. With NODE she organises international festivals, training formats and the programme “Digitale Welten” on network policy and cultural youth education. She is also a co-initiator of the performance collective [in]operabilities, where she researches on “Aesthetics of Access” in contemporary musical theatre.

Capacity for the public programme is limited. Registration for the vernissage and guided tours is required. 
The guided tours take place with a minimum of 5 participants.

Image Credit: 

Prajakta Potnis, Capsule 5, 2016, Print on cotton rag paper, 170 x 115 cm © Prajakta Potnis