The Temporary Gallery was founded in December 2008, initially under the name "Rental Gallery" - based on the model of a rental gallery - in the legal form of a registered association, on the initiative of gallery owners Christian Nagel and Thomas Rehbein as well as Art Cologne director Daniel Hug. The aim was to strengthen Cologne's art market, which was increasingly in decline at the time, by providing additional exhibition space for international art galleries. In April 2009, the Rental Gallery moved into an industrial hall in the centre of Cologne and began its operations. However, the model of a rental gallery did not prevail at the Cologne location: its name changed to "Temporary Gallery", and at the beginning of 2012 it ceased to operate as a rental gallery.
In September 2012, the Temporary Gallery reopened, now in its original form as a non-profit art association: exhibition, mediation and cooperation became the cornerstones of its programme, its special focus - the intersection of contemporary artistic and curatorial practice and theory, as well as their discourse and embedding in a wider cultural historical, scientific and social context. In 2013, the Temporary Gallery emerged as the winner of a public competition organised by the City of Cologne for a new "Centre for Contemporary Art" and started to receive institutional support from the City. In addition to solo and group exhibitions, lecture and film series, and collaborations with guest curators and universities, it also started to offer individual project consultations. In 2018, the Temporary Gallery was awarded the ADKV-ART COLOGNE Prize.
The Temporary Gallery was directed by Daniel Müller (2009) and Caroline Nathusius (2010-2011). From 2012-2018, Regina Barunke was the artistic and managing director. Since January 2019, the institution is directed by Aneta Rostkowska.
Team
Aneta Rostkowska is a curator and author and a graduate of the de Appel Curatorial Programme in Amsterdam. Since January 2019, she has been the director of Temporary Gallery, a centre for contemporary art in Cologne. In addition to her work as a curator, she teaches art theory, art history and philosophy at various universities. In her work, Rostkowska pursues experimental curatorial practices in which politically relevant narratives are presented in carefully constructed sensory environments. Rostkowska studied philosophy, economics and art history in Krakow, Poznań, Heidelberg and Frankfurt am Main. She worked as a curator at the Bunkier Sztuki contemporary art gallery in Krakow (2011-2016) and at the Academy of the Arts of the World in Cologne (2016-2018).
Gitte Moll has been working in cultural management for many years. Since 2017, she has been coordinating publicly funded international exhibition and publication projects for various institutions. She is responsible for the organizational implementation and budget management. After completing a master's degree in humanities and social sciences, she previously worked for private companies as well as artists and galleries.
Lisa Klosterkötter (she/her) is a curator, supporter and co-creator of socio-cultural spaces. Since 2014, she has been realising independent projects in exhibition spaces, institutions and public spaces, in various city districts as well as in peripheral locations. In collaboration with artists, curators, collectives and institutions, she works on exhibitions, performance programmes, interventions and participatory formats that often focus on the immediate experience and embed artistic works in an overarching, immersive narrative or thematic bracket. Lisa Klosterkötter has led projects such as Über Brücken - Bridging (Cologne 2022-2024), DOLLHOUSES (Hamburg 2021, Cologne 2023), Les Gardiennes, Kunstmuseum Bochum (2022/23), Das öde Haus, Centre for Literature (Münster 2024), AIC ON - Das sogenannte Draußen (Cologne 2023, 2024) and Gegenwart: Doing Youth (Hamburg 2020/21).
Since 2023, together with Paula Erstmann, she has realised the neighbourhood project Temporary Kitchen im Mauritiusviertel (Cologne 2023), in the course of which various events were implemented with the mobile kitchen of the Temporary Gallery, mainly in public spaces. In 2024, together with Aneta Rostkowska, she curated the participatory exhibition Blue Binding Ribbon at the Temporary Gallery.
From 2024 to 2025, she is the artistic director (interim) of Temporary Gallery and, together with Gitte Moll, she stands in for Aneta Rostkowska during her parental leave.
Anna Bedkowska is an art historian specialising in 20th century architecture and art in public space. Nowadays mainly active as a registrar and cultural researcher, she joined the team in 2021 and has since supported Temporary Gallery in the areas of communication, PR and art logistics.
<Kris Dittel is an independent curator, editor and writer, based in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. In 2022-23, together with Aneta Rostkowska, she co-curated the exhibition Unruly Kinships and its event series, and the Forms of Kinship study group.
https://krisdittel.com/
Christina Hanich has been working as a project-based production manager for the Temporary Gallery since August 2023. She co-designed and produced the mobile kitchen Temporary Kitchen in collaboration with Raf Andra Bureau for Cooking as Performance, took over the production management for Ines Doujak's solo exhibition Every courageous life is a song to the future and is currently managing Alberta Whittle's solo exhibition …Moving Beyond the Time of Salt. She has also been coordinating the residency programme since 2024.
https://www.christina-hanich.com
Stefan Lochmüller is an artist living in Cologne who works primarily with painting and drawing. Since 2018, he has regularly supervised the installation and dismantling of the exhibitions at Temporary Gallery.
Paloma Nana (she/her) is an independent cultural scientist, cultural producer and musician. She studied Media Cultural Studies, African Studies and Critical Contemporary Theories in Cologne and Lüneburg. She has been working for Temporary Gallery in various and diverse positions since 2020. From 2023 to 2024, she was one of two ombudspersons and coordinators for institutional accessibility appointed by the TG in the context of the EU network project Islands of Kinships. As part of the exhibition Unruly Kinships (2023), she conceptualized and organized the interdisciplinary event series It's Fiction Like a Sitcom. She currently curates Temporary Gallery's youth education program, which includes a school cooperation with the Katharina-Henoth-Gesamtschule in Cologne-Vingst. In her work as an independent researcher, she merges critical and discrimination-sensitive self-reflection with postcolonial and queerfeminist research in relation to resistant cultural and musical practices.
Nada Rosa Schroer works as an independent curator in Cologne and as a researcher at the Institute for Art and Material Culture at Technical University of Dortmund. With a penchant for feminist science fiction and posthuman philosophy, Nada Rosa Schroer is engaged in curatorial and artistic practices that address the ecological, social and psychological consequences of the colonial capitalocene. In her research she focuses on post-industrial water bodies in landscapes of extraction, seeking hydropedagocial methodologies for a paradigm shift in the relationship to water. Beforehand she was curator at LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur Münster/ LWL-Industriemuseen, curatorial assistent at Akademie der Künste der Welt and collaborated as freelance with institutions such as Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum, PACT Zollverein, medienwerk.nrw among others.
Since 2020 she regularly works with Temporary Gallery, where she curated the programmes Towards Permacultural Institutions. Exercises in Collective Thinking (2022, with Julia Haarmann and Aneta Rostkowska), Curating Transformation: Allyship - Degrowth - Grounding (2023, with Aneta Rostkowska) and Instituting in Circles: Ecological Approaches in Art and Art Institutions (2022), as well as the exhibition Anne de Boer & Eloïse Bonneviot: All of the Critters (2024).
www.nadarosaschroer.xyz
Paulina Seyfried (she/her) describes herself as disabled, queer and white. She is an art historian, freelance cultural producer and structural consultant by profession. She has been working as a freelance cultural producer in Cologne, Düsseldorf and Berlin since 2014. Her work focuses on collaborative projects, exhibition development, artist management and organisational coaching. Paulina is the author of various artist and exhibition texts and producer of various independent projects and institutions, including Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum, Festival Theaterformen and insert female artist – literarisches Forum für feministische Stimmen. Since August 2023 she has been co-director of the residency programme at the Akademie der Künste der Welt in Cologne and from July 2024 inclusion consultant at un-label. At Temporary Gallery, she is currently coordinator for institutional accessibility and local collaborations as part of the Creative Europe project Islands of Kinship. Further information: http://paulinaseyfried.de/
Association
Board
Thomas Rehbein, 1. Chairman
Meyer Voggenreiter, 2. Chairman
Lilian Haberer, Treasurer
Ilka Becker
Member
ADKV Arbeitsgemeinschaft deutscher Kunstvereine
medienwerk.nrw
AIC Art Initiatives Cologne
CIMAM
List of funders and supporters since 2012
Structural funding und support
Cultural Office of the City of Cologne
Deltax contemporary, Wirtschafts- und Steuerberatungsgesellschaft mbH
Programme funding
AC/E - Acción Cultural Española
Academy of the Arts of the World
British Council
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
Consulate General of the Netherlands
Creative Scotland
Culture Ireland
Danish Arts Foundation
Embassy of the Netherlands in Berlin
Embassy of Norway in Berlin
Embassy of Portugal / Instituto Camões
Förderprogramm der Sparkasse KölnBonn, supervised by the SK Stiftung Kultur
Goethe-Institut Deutschland
Hypo-Kulturstiftung
Institut français
Japan Foundation
Königlich Norwegische Botschaft
Kunststiftung NRW
LVR Landschaftsverband Rheinland
Ministry of Family, Children, Youth, Culture and Sport of North Rhine-Westphalia (until 2017)
Ministry of Culture and Science of North Rhine-Westphalia (since 2017)
Mondriaan Fonds
NRW KULTURsekretariat
OCA Office for Contemporary Art
PERSPEKTIVE - Fund for Contemporary Art and Architecture
RheinEnergie Stiftung Kultur
Stiftung Kunstfonds
Sponsoring and further support
Boucherie–Design
Brandl Kunsttransporte
Farbanalyse
Gaffel Kölsch
Hotel Chelsea