MARTa Herford

Marta Herford sets standards. With its innovative and future-oriented approach it is a place where knowledge, thinking and creativity are combined with sheer joie de vivre. This is where questions about the present meet the ideas of tomorrow.

Marta Herford is an internationally oriented museum for contemporary art with a special focus on architecture and interior design. Exhibition and education are at the centre of our engagement with art. At the same time we feel bound by the classical functions of a museum: collecting, preserving and researching. In all of this our focus remains on contemporary trends and developments, and is always inquisitive, open and experimental. The communication of our ideas to the outside is rooted in our regional identity and based on an international network.

At the start of the twentieth century, Herford developed as an important location for the furniture and clothing industry. In 1996 this highly productive and internationally active economic structure gave some creative minds the idea of laying down a clear marker in the region. The basic idea was to bring art, economy and society together in a spectacular building.

The decision to appoint Frank Gehry as the architect and Jan Hoet as the founding director gave the project its decisive direction. Marta Herford was ceremoniously opened on the 7th of May 2005 with a great response from the public.

From the start of 2009 the exhibition and museum director Roland Nachtigäller and his team have been presenting a highly diverse program of contemporary art, architectural research and basic questions of design.