Oral History meets Video Clip

Innovative Formats in the New Media Guide of the Hilti Art Foundation

 

Art thrives on encounters – between people, ideas and forms of expression.

The Hilti Art Foundation in Vaduz has brought this principle to life in a fascinating way with its new media guide. Instead of a purely factual presentation, visitors are offered a dynamic dialogue between video clips, music, theatre and Oral History. Images enter into resonance with sounds, memories with the present, and stories unfold directly within the exhibition space.

An innovative format that makes museum visits more personal, immediate and surprising.

How this project came about, what feedback visitors have given and how it will continue to develop is explained by Dr Karin Schick, Director of the Hilti Art Foundation, together with Klaus Kowatsch and Daniel Franz, Artistic Director and Visual Content Creator at tonwelt – guiding solutions.

KS: The collection of the Hilti Art Foundation has been publicly accessible in a museum building in Vaduz, Liechtenstein, for more than ten years, and in 2019/20 it was published in two extensive scholarly volumes.

The collection was therefore by no means unknown, but there was clearly potential to open it up further and make it accessible to a wider audience.

When I was appointed head of the foundation in April 2024, I wanted as many people as possible to discover and enjoy the outstanding works in our collection: both on site during visits to our changing exhibitions and from outside the museum.

KK: Dr Karin Schick approached us in winter 2024 with this desire for greater openness.

I already knew Karin Schick from our collaboration on various audio guides for the Hamburger Kunsthalle.

For the Hilti Art Foundation, however, this project involved nothing less than developing an innovative overall concept and implementing it in the form of a new media guide.

To make the guide as diverse and engaging as possible, video clips offered exciting possibilities beyond traditional audio formats.

For me, it was important to create these different encounters using a variety of creative approaches – not simply to make the overall experience as colourful as possible, but above all to appeal individually to a broader spectrum of visitors of all ages.

KS: Most museum guides still tend to adopt an authoritative role: a narrator appears all-knowing and presents a single, supposedly definitive truth.

Yet an artwork lives through the diversity of interpretation – no two people see, think about or experience exactly the same thing.

It therefore seemed natural for us to involve a wide range of different voices: from collectors to schoolchildren, from contemporary witnesses to artists working in other disciplines.

When visitors see and hear these perspectives, their own view of the artwork opens up once again, and its complexity and multiple meanings become immediately apparent.

DF: We only truly encountered the incredibly rich collection of histories and stories while filming the individual sequences.

Of course, we had a certain direction in mind during the interviews – what should be told and what should be communicated. However, we did not see our role as media producers creating a linear narrative, but rather as interested conversation partners.

The stories and personal accounts often led us down completely new paths, surprised us ourselves and productively challenged our assumptions.

From our perspective, the greatest gift was the high level of trust and the artistic freedom that Karin Schick and her team gave us throughout the project.

KK: Absolutely.

An essential part of the concept was to establish connections with local participants and creative partners.

For example, we worked with students from the International School Rheintal in Buchs (Switzerland), the Liechtenstein Theatre (TAK) and Luke Hsu, a violin virtuoso from the Music Academy in Liechtenstein.

The videos always maintained a connection to the respective artwork – sometimes more direct, sometimes more open and associative.

Luke Hsu’s interpretation of Paul Klee’s painting Zankduett is truly moving.

The theatre scene we developed with Oliver Reinhard in response to Max Beckmann’s Traum des Soldaten, based on a text by Thomas Spieckermann, became a video clip with a completely independent aesthetic, visual language and expressive quality.

Allowing this kind of thematic and stylistic openness is something a museum first has to be willing to embrace.

KS: We also experienced great openness and commitment from our partners.

Particularly moving are the contributions by Mayen Beckmann, granddaughter and estate administrator of Max Beckmann, as well as Kitty Kemr, partner and estate administrator of the painter Gotthard Graubner.

They represent living Oral History, conveying the stories behind the creation and impact of artworks in a deeply personal and powerful way.

Education and inspiring entertainment do not have to contradict one another – quite the opposite: what touches us remains in our memory.

DF: We are now very excited about the continued exchange and the many valuable encounters with people connected to this collection that still lie ahead of us – encounters that we will be able to transform into new stories for the media guide.

It is wonderful to see that the intensive work on the content is already reflected in the statistics: More and more visitors are using the guide in German and English, and the amount of time spent with individual artworks, as well as in the museum as a whole, has increased significantly. This indicates that visitors are engaging more deeply with the art.

However, I consider this work valuable not only because of the statistical confirmation, but also because it opens up an art collection and reveals its stories while highlighting the importance of high-quality content.

How do we, as a museum, want to engage with our audiences? What voice do we want our exhibitions to have? What kind of dialogue do we want to create with visitors?

I believe that the Hilti Art Foundation offers an approach that will attract attention well beyond the region.

KS: And our collaboration continues:

Recently, we visited colleagues at the Nolde Foundation in Seebüll and the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern. Afterwards, we travelled to New York for an interview with the painter Sean Scully.

Until April 2026, we are presenting Scully’s work for the first time in dialogue with Klee’s art, and we had the opportunity to speak with him about his artistic practice in advance – resulting in a wonderful contribution to our media guide.

This text was originally published in German. The English translation provided here was generated using AI.