The Siegfried and Jutta Weishaupt Collection is one of Germany's most important private art collections. Over more than five decades, the entrepreneurial couple from southern Germany has assembled an outstanding collection of modern and contemporary art from Europe and the United States. Today, the collection is permanently accessible to the public at the kunsthalle weishaupt in Ulm.

The origins of the collection date back to the mid-1960s, when Siegfried Weishaupt began engaging intensively with Concrete and geometric art. A key influence was the close connection to the Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm (Ulm School of Design), with which his father’s company had collaborated in product design since the late 1950s. In this context, Weishaupt encountered artists such as Max Bill, Josef Albers, and Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart, whose works continue to hold key positions within the collection. A commitment to clear forms and luminous color became its defining principle.

Over the years, the collectors’ sustained engagement with art gradually broadened the scope of the collection. Major representatives of American Color Field painting, including Mark Rothko and Morris Louis, are shown alongside European artists such as Yves Klein and Gotthard Graubner. Postwar American art is prominently represented by figures including Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, and Keith Haring. Groups of works related to ZERO and Op Art, as well as selected sculptures and spatial installations, expand the collection’s focus on painting to encompass central developments in art since the second half of the twentieth century. The American artist Robert Longo occupies a particularly significant position within the collection.

Since its opening in 2007, the collection has also had a distinct architectural presence in the building designed by Wolfram Wöhr in the heart of Ulm. Conceived as an architecture in service of art, the light-filled kunsthalle weishaupt places the works themselves at the forefront. Across approximately 1,300 square meters of exhibition space, the collection is presented in changing thematic displays.

In addition to overview exhibitions of the collection, solo exhibitions have been dedicated to artists represented by substantial bodies of work, including Keith Haring, Imi Knoebel, Robert Longo, and Ben Willikens. The programme is complemented by thematic exhibition projects that further explore specific focus points—such as color, light, ZERO, or sculpture—and place them in new contexts.

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