Helios Media GmbH

    Berlin (ots) - Star architect Richard Meier's extension to the Arp Museum was officially opened last week on Friday, September 28, at a ceremony attended by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Social Democratic party leader Kurt Beck.

    "To me, the only place for a museum was at the top of the hill," Meier had said long before at a press conference. "I love museums," he added. "Museums are places where people come together and where viewers can have a one-on-one relationship to works of art."

    Dr. Dieter Lange, chairman of the Arp foundation, had been fighting together with architect Richard Meier for more than seventeen years in order to get this famous place on the river Rhine for this Europe's first class art museum.

    Dieter Lange: "This month we have been successful in building the last castle on the river Rhine only for art. A few kilometers later, the river Rhine is leaving the volcano rocks of the famous castle and wine region Rhein-Mosel-Nahe and is heading towards the Netherlands, passing Cologne, Duesseldorf and other big cities."

    Arp (1886 - 1966) had always been a real European artist:  He was an Alsatian avant-garde poet, painter and sculptor who became one of the founders of the anti-establishment Dada movement. His wife Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889 - 1943), a Swiss national, was both a painter and sculptor and active both in the Dada and surrealist movements. Over 400 of the couple's works are owned by the state of Rhineland-Palatinate.

    The Arp foundation with chairman Dieter Lange expects a lot more than the first 8.000 visitors within two days. Lange: "This is a real high potential estate and location for what we called 'a place where European leaders can meet'. The variety of art on this outstanding location impressed also a lot of my business friends to think about congresses or having think tanks together not only in the surrounding of Hans Arp's art, we also offer a huge workshop for managers to be creative on a highly sophisticated level."

    Interviews by Frank Ossenbrink, der Frank Ossenbrink Media Group.

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