„Le directeur est mort! Vive le directeur!“

Classically educated, Goepper demonstrated an affinity for art as well as technical talents from a young age, with particular interests in the theater, drawing, and pottery arts. His studies in Art History, Sinology, and Japanology as well as Sanskrit and Tibetan at the Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität in Munich took place under such greats as Max Loehr (1903–88), Herbert Franke (1914–2011), and Horst Hammitzsch (1909–91). His doctoral dissertation on “Tang Dai: A Court Painter of the Qing Period” placed Goepper in the tradition of early western scholarship on Chinese art. Indeed, Goepper shaped the Euro-American discourse on the then hardly known field of East Asian Art History like few others in the 20th century. A short biography highlights major events, exhibition projects, publications, and awards that marked Goepper's professional career.

A practice- and object-based perspective characterized Goepper’s life-long engagement with the genres, eras, and regions of arts and crafts of China, Japan, and Korea. The polymath’s spheres of impact were multi-faceted: as academic, curator, museum director, university professor, translator, intercultural ambassador. Naturally, this jubilee presentation is fragmentary. The twenty-five exhibits, rather, stand as representatives for Goepper’s twenty-five years in office at the MOK: each object covers one year respectively – be it in the form of an exhibition poster, installation view, purchase, or gift.

The selection crystallizes the director’s broad collection activities—from pre-imperial oracle bones from China and Silla-period ceramics from Korea, to Tibetan art and Shingon Buddhism, to modern and contemporary painting, calligraphy, and lacquer art from Japan. Personal companions and institutional partnerships, and herewith associated acquisition histories are likewise addressed. Last but not least, the show reflects the MOK as a Cologne exhibition space, whose interim period 1945–77 wrote a local city history with venues in the Overstolzenhaus, the Hahnentorburg, and the Josef-Haubrich-Kunsthalle, among others.

The film shown on the monitor documents the years 1966–90 photographically. Accompanying the collage of images is an audio recording of Goepper’s farewell speech held on retirement from office in March 1990. His bold concluding statement so serves as the title of the anniversary presentation – “Le directeur est mort! Vive le directeur!”

The presentation is curated by Shao-Lan Hertel.

Mit freundlicher Unterstützung

Orientstiftung zur Förderung der Ostasiatischen Kunst
Fördererkreis des Museums für Ostasiatische Kunst Köln

Photo: Roger Goepper, 1981 © Jaroslav Poncar