Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen — Attraction in Dusseldorf

As a former Düsseldorf citizen, living in London for 15 years, I was excited to show my wife (British, from Indian heritage) "my" town and especially the great art exhibition at the "K20" today. Unfortunately she had a similar experience as the person, who complained here about racism (see Dakota Hunter, 4 months ago). After we had separated to explore different sections, one of the staff members confronted my wife, telling her: "You are not allowed here without a sticker!" although my wife had both our tickets in her hand. Since this employee used the wrong word, saying sticker rather than wristband, my wife was confused, and tried to walk back to me. Then the employee stopped her, telling her again, she was not allowed walking back but had to get a wristband from the reception. She then realised, that my wife had a wristband, but didn't even apologise to her. The same employee was a few times in the same area, where I was, but never questioned my entitlement to be there, nor anyone else's. Since my wife was at that time the only person with a darker skin tone, we are pretty sure, that this staff member's behaviour was racially biased/motivated. We have travelled to about 50 countries worldwide. It's VERY SHAMEFUL that after not even 24 hours in Düsseldorf my wife experienced racism fo the very first time on any of these vacations. It tells me a lot about my German compratiots and makes it easier for me not to consider ever moving back here from...

Beautiful selection but sadly IMPOSSIBLE to enjoy.

We attended today to the "Nacht der museen" event, in our first 10 minutes I was scolded for POINTING OUT (not touching or getting close to the walls) a script on the wall. 5 minutes after that, my husband got scolded as well for not wearing his jacket. The cherry on top, was this man yelling at me because he thought I was taking a video; instead of politely approaching me, he said "Videos are not allowed, I need you to delete that video right now!" There was, indeed, no video. No need to say he of course didn’t apologize for such rude treatment.

Following rules is never a problem, before even taking pictures my husband and I checked if there was any kind of restrictions and there were no signs or visible rules about how pointing at a wall, not wearing your jacket and taking a picture were forbidden actions. We were not being loud or disruptive, anyway we had to go out after 20 minutes because the staff makes it simply impossible.

I want to add that we started the event here, which was a bit sad because with this at the very beginning we felt the whole experience was...

After being a member for a year and visiting 10+ times, I’m not renewing the membership. There are two main reasons. Number 1, unlike the other museums where I had multiple-year membership (and would’ve renewed had I not moved out of the city), K20 and K21 do not offer enough layers and depth to bring new discoveries constantly. The collections do not span many centuries, nor are they displayed in a manner that spark off enough rich conversations between pieces. Note that my wording is “not enough”. Some inter-work conversation is there, for sure. But I’ve seen much better presentations elsewhere.

Number 2, cold staff who always avert their eyes and don’t return my smiles. I go to museums for learning and joy. I bring my good mood. I smile at every one who crosses eyes with me. Never at any place—not in Boston, not in Chicago, not in DC or NYC or Philly or Amsterdam or Leipzig or Berlin or anywhere I’ve been for museum visits—have I suffered so many cold and judgmental facial expressions in the space of three hours. They are out...