Brutal beauty

William Cook takes us on a tour of 2010’s unlikely European Capital of Culture

‘And the European Capital of Culture in 2010 will be …the Ruhr.’ When I first heard the announcement, it sounded like a particularly unfunny German joke. The Ruhr, after all, is Europe’s biggest rust belt — a vast swathe of mines and factories, many now derelict or redundant, which stretches across north-west Germany like a huge unsightly rash. It’s hard to imagine a less likely cultural capital, and normally I wouldn’t have gone anywhere near it had it not been for a fond memory of one of the nicest afternoons I’ve ever spent.

A few years ago I was in this part of Germany on business and ended up in Essen, one of the biggest cities in the Ruhr. Essen is uninspiring, to say the least — a cross between Coventry and Croydon — but its Folkwang Museum is amazing, with an incredible collection of 19th- and 20th-century art. No wonder the American art historian Paul Sachs (co-founder of New York’s Museum of Modern Art) called it ‘the most beautiful museum in the world’. I spent a wonderful few hours there, and ever since I’d been looking for an excuse to go back. If such an ordinary city could accommodate such an extraordinary gallery, maybe there was more to the Ruhr than meets the eye?

For a lot of Spectator readers, the very idea of Cultural Capitals is probably an anathema, combining the twin bogeymen of EU federalism and state subsidy. However, Professor Oliver Scheytt, Ruhr 2010’s general manager, is confident that this jamboree will generate new money, not just fritter it away. Apparently, previous Cultural Capitals have enjoyed a 20 per cent increase in visitors in the first year, and 10 per cent more thereafter.