Capital gain: Jennifer Allen on K21. (News).

In the era of the ever-expanding museum, the Kunstsamiung Nordrhein-Westfalen introduces an alternative, cooperative approach. The Dusseldorf institution has placed Its most recent work in the Standehaus (the former house of parliament, abandoned in +/-988), which it rechristened K21, while keeping the bulk of its collection at its original site on the Grabbeplatz, now called K20. The codelike monikers would seem to suggest that only twenty-firstcentury work would grace the resettled space, but as Julian Heynen, who came to K2.1. as artistic director after nearly two decades at the Krefelder Kunstmuseen, explains, "We couldn't start at 2000; the century is still too young." Instead they've chosen an earlier-some might say crucial-cutoff. "1978 is an important moment," Heynen observes. "You have Dan Graham's pavilions, punk versus disco, the first in vitro baby."

At the Standehaus, which reopens this month, the government will hold official functions on the piazza while art is exhibited in galleries upstairs and down. Heynen says the whole venture is a result of "tactical partnerships"--and not just with the state. He has persuaded collectors Simone and Heinz Ackermans, Reiner Speck, and Gaby and Wilhelm Schurmann to make impressive loans--Robert Gober, Sigmar Polke, Raymond Pettibon-which will stand in until K21 expands its own holdings. Katharina Fritsch, whose work is featured in the inaugural exhibition, "Startkapital" (Start-up capital), has made permanent loans of important early works, including Elefant, 1987. Jorge Pardo designed the bar and restaurant. "We're not opening a product but a process," Heynen remarks.

The Standehaus, a neo-Renaissance building completed in 1880, intimately links this process with local history. Architect Uwe Kiessler stripped the building down to its original floor plan, added a glass cupola, and restored the parliamentary room, where Reinhard Mucha's Das Deutschlandgerat, 1990, has been reconstructed, ten years after its appearance at the Venice Biennale. Kiessler also allotted fifty-seven thousand square feet for exhibition space, including three floors of well-lit rooms and a vast subterranean gallery. Heynen isn't yet sure what will be shown under the cupola. "it's a difficult space for exhibiting art," he admits. But it does afford another advantageous convergence: "The view over the city is spectacular."

Jennifer Allen is an art writer based in Berlin.