Institute for Art Documentation

The Institute for Art Documentation and Scenography promotes, produces and arranges art in the form of documentaries, television contributions and media art installations.

With its more than 500 documented artists since 1957, IKS is one of the largest private media archives of the visual arts in Europa.

IKS publishes artist portraits, often in collaboration with international museums or as in-house productions.

Ralph Goertz filming Joel Meyerowitz on 5th Avenue, New York / photo: Joel Meyerowitz © Joel Meyerowitz / IKS

In close collaboration with artists, museums, galleries and broadcasters we produce different cinematic styles which contains the pure documentary of exhibitions, artist portraits and media-art installations. Digital strategies, tthe scenographic setup of museum exhibitions and consulting curators are another form of content offerings.

Especially for curators and museums we can offer a wide range of artist documentaries on the substantive expansion of exhibitions. A scientific examination of contemporary art takes place in the areas of "artistic strategies" and "Media and Copyright".

Today the IKS is the leading company in producing art films with a wide range between art archive, documentaries and cultural/art management.

The IKS was founded in 2009 by Ralph Goertz (CV) who studied Film and Law at the Ruhr-University in Bochum, Germany and made his Master degree (M.A.S.) in Cultural Management and Science of Art at the University of Art and Design in Zurich/Luzern, Switzerland.

From 2000 to 2008 he was artistic director of the Kammeroper NRW and developed a new form of performing arts between opera, drama and video art. In 2022 he expanded the IKS with its own photography department, IKS PHOTO.

Today Goertz works as a filmmaker, curator of photography and lecturer. In 2011 he received the Delphic Art Movie Award for his documentary 'Robert Mapplethorpe. Shapes' and in 2024 his film on German photo artist Andreas Gursky has won the "On Art Poland" Filmfestival in Warsaw. The exhibition "Martin Parr Retrospective" curated by Ralph Goertz was anounced by the newspaper WELT in 2019 as "One of the nine best exhibitions in the summer of 2019 in Europe!". In 2020 the exhibition 'Subject and Object. Photo Rhine-Ruhr' (curated by Ralph Goertz with Gregor Jansen and Dana Bergmann) at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf has been awarded as 'Best Exhibition 2020'. His main focus in photography is German, British and American photography since the 1960s.