Culture during Corona times: How NRW transfers culture to the Internet

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Aerobics for at home instead of ballet on stage, writer Florian Illies philosophizes about Caspar David Friedrich's cloud images, an actor experiments with old tapes: In the corona pandemic, museums and theaters are suffering from the closings.

But the crisis has also given creativity a huge boost.

Live tours, digital scavenger hunts or works of art on the Internet - nobody has to forego culture in the winter lockdown.

The Landestheater Detmold surprises with a more sporty offer for people in the home office: From February 8th, the dancers of the ballet ensemble will offer ten minutes of fitness from aerobics to Zumba every day.

It starts at six in the morning.

In February, actors read Abitur material in the live stream.

If you like it scary, you can take part in the werewolf game night on February 19th via Zoom.

Many museums have been approaching their audiences digitally for a long time, but even more is possible in lockdown.

More than 80,000 works have now been published in the new online collection of the Folkwang Museum in Essen, and the Keith Haring show, which ended prematurely, can be seen online in "Video Spotlight Tours".

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The exhibition on Caspar David Friedrich in the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf is closed, but the art historian and “cloud pope” Florian Illies explains the painter's “unearthly views” in zoom videos.

Another exhibition, “Outrage!”, Was only on view for four days before the lockdown came.

Now it is available as a virtual tour in the network.

For an exhibition on the expressionist Alexej von Jawlensky, the Kunstmuseum Bonn developed live tours on the Internet, "which the audience enthusiastically accepted," as museum director Stephan Berg explains.

"The only major difficulty with digital communication for us at the moment is that these film formats cost a lot of money if they are to come across professionally."

In the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, online drawing courses for the Max Klinger exhibition, which is also closed, are currently popular: At first there were 20 participants, now there are 80. The digital offer is also used more frequently in the Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal.

“People miss the museum,” says museum director Roland Mönig.

The house has started a series of talks with museum directors online.

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The Kunstsammlung NRW used the lockdown to restore the heavily damaged painting by the American painter Helen Frankenthaler "Cross".

The entire exhibition program of the Landesgalerie has found its way online.

For the finale of the Thomas Ruff exhibition, there will be a live symposium on the Internet lasting several hours on February 7th.

Museums could play an important role, especially in times of crisis, said art collection director Susanne Gaensheimer recently to the "Süddeutsche Zeitung".

"We could be life rafts."

Despite the lockdown, “the museum is not standing still,” says a spokeswoman for the Folkwang Museum.

"Lockdown actually causes more work," says the Museum Ludwig in Cologne.

The museum takes you behind the scenes in a podcast.

Curators and security guards talk about their work.

There can be no talk of idling in Corona times in the LWL museums in Westphalia-Lippe either.

Information boards are being renewed and machines and vehicles in the museums are started up for test runs.

Supervisors take part in repair work.

Some of them also help in the fiber optic clinics, dormitories and administration.

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The Literature Center Burg Hülshoff has put together 27 “care packages” from art and culture online.

The LWL Roman Museum in Haltern takes you on a live digital tour as a "paper chase".

As painful as the closure is, it also offers the "opportunity to further strengthen our digital presence and visibility and to develop new communication formats in order to reach people at home", says LWL cultural director Barbara Rüschoff-Parzinger.

However, the closings also have downsides, as some houses report short-time work.

And the lockdown also produces losses - it is 10,000 euros per day in the Kunstpalast alone.

The theaters have also migrated to the net.

But rehearsals continue - in the hope that the right curtain will be able to open again at some point.

"The basic mood is melancholy and a little sad," said Düsseldorf Artistic Director Wilfried Schulz, describing the mood.

"We work and we also rehearse, but at the moment you don't know when the productions will see the light of day."

There are many stages online with live streaming.

In Bochumer Schauspiel, performances are played as "ghost performances" in the empty theater and streamed into the living room.

After that, the performances can no longer be called up "in order to preserve the uniqueness of the theater experience to a certain extent," says spokesman Alexander Kruse.

Live chat is running at the same time, which is supposed to create a sense of community like in a real theater.

The Dortmund theater is also currently producing “one recording after the other for the network,” says spokesman Alexander Kalouti.

Recordings from the time before the pandemic would also find an online audience.

The Deutsche Oper am Rhein also streams selected productions and makes them available online free of charge in cooperation with the European opera network Operavision.

Handel's “Xerxes” became the most successful online performance in 2020 with over 100,000 online viewers.

The current production of Victor Ullmann's opera “The Emperor of Atlantis” has already reached more than 10,000 viewers worldwide.

“The ideas are bubbling up in a more diverse way,” says Artistic Director Schulz from the Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf. “The network opens up new freedom and scope.” The insider tip in the Schauspielhaus is currently the “Lost and Sound” podcast. Actor André Kaczmarczyk saved hundreds of old theater magnetic tapes from being disposed of in the garbage can - labeled with the names of productions and actors from bygone times. It wasn't until the lockdown that he found time to listen to the decades-old tapes: chants, Ute Lemper, crickets chirping, door creaking, crickets chirping. Every two weeks he now has a new surprise ready in the podcast. A fan comments on the website: "If there is anything positive about Corona, it is that there is time for this wonderful podcast."