Organizing Culture: Lernlab at the Lenbachhaus Munich
2026-01-07 From November 3 to 7, students from Leuphana University Lüneburg and the University of St. Gallen visited the Lenbachhaus in Munich as researchers and learners to address issues of organizational change in and around art museums as part of the learning laboratory Organizing Culture: The Art Museum as Site of Organizational Change.
In collaboration with the Lenbachhaus Munich, this course examined the organizational challenges facing museums and reflected on possible responses and new practices of organizing. Students were given the unique opportunity to engage empirically with a leading art museum and the broader institutionalized landscape of art and culture organization.
As a site-specific course dedicated to field research-based teaching and learning, participants were able to take a closer look behind the scenes, explore the processes, technologies, and atmospheres of organizing in the museum, and engage in dialogue with its curators, technicians, administrative staff, mediators, and managers.
The seminar began with an invitation from the Lenbachhaus to the exhibition opening “Out of Focus: Leonore Mau and Haiti.” In the following days, students were able to participate in performances, interventions, or relational viewings by the curatorial team, talk to visitors to the Lenbachhaus, and explore the nearby urban space, Munich's art district. At the same time, Lenbachhaus staff were available to the students for group interviews, while the director of the Lenbachhaus, Dr. Matthias Mühling, gave the seminar a guided tour of the museum lasting several hours, focusing on its history, the collection, and current challenges.
The students use this empirical material to work in groups from different perspectives, such as digitality or sustainability, to explore and analyze new forms of curating or new practices for including the complexity of museum work.
They presented their findings publicly at the Lenbachhaus in a kind of vernissage on the last day of the seminar.
The seminar “Organizing Culture: The Art Museum as Site of Organizational Change” at the Lenbachhaus is part of a series of learning laboratories that, as part of Community Arts and Culture, takes students from Leuphana and HSG to various European museums: In addition to the Lenbachhaus, these have included the Zentrum Paul Klee and the Kunstmuseum Basel, as well as the MUDAM (Luxembourg). The next seminar will take place in November 2026 at the Belvedere Vienna.
Hintergrund
Alongside universities, art museums are among the oldest institutions in which people reflect on and put into practice the organization, presentation, and history of knowledge, as well as artifacts and objects. Art museums are currently undergoing a profound transformation in terms of their functions and organizational forms. This transformation is being driven by several developments: the societal transition to an experience economy and the culturalization of urban life, new forms of audience participation and exhibition, and debates about more inclusive and decolonial practices of collecting, displaying, and reflecting on art. Added to this are the demands for more sustainable forms of conservation and organization, as well as the increasing importance of digital infrastructures, information technologies, and media platforms. The contemporary art museum is thus an exemplary site of organizational change. However, it remains to be seen how this change will be implemented in concrete terms and how the museum will be reorganized today.