My Private Heroes

For the opening exhibition in Frank Gehry's gleaming new MARTa Herford Museum in Germany, Artistic Director Jan Hoet, longtime director (from 1975 to 2001) of the Stedelijk Museum, rounded up images and objects representing (his private--and now public) heroes. Uniting them is a sweeping and important examination of the idea of heroism in visual culture from different eras by Hoet and other scholars such as Anne-Marie Bonnet, Bazon Bock and Boris Groys. This intensely personal and subjective selection, culled from his 30 years in curating, includes depictions of artists, singers, boxers and filmmakers, by 76 artists from Abramovic to Ziegler, with Kiefer, Koons, Polke, Picasso, and many more in between. And since MARTa is based on an interdisciplinary approach to the arts, with its name forming an acronym from the German words for furniture, art, ambience and architecture, that spirit of inclusion encompasses works like Alessandro Mendini's Proust chair and video works by Ingrid Mwangi. It's likely you'll find some of your own heroes among Hoet's.