Kunsthaus Kannen (English "Kannen Art-House") is an art museum for outsider art in Münster. This art comes from amateurs, children, people with mental illness or intellectual disability and social outsiders such as prison inmates. With over 5000 drawings, paintings and sculptures, the Kunsthaus collection is one of the most extensive German collections of outsider art in a psychiatric context.

You will find the Kunsthaus Kannen in the hospital complex of the Alexianer Münster GmbH in the district of Amelsbüren. It shows exhibitions and art projects every year, for example annual and sales exhibitions of works by artists from the Kunsthaus as well as guest artists. Other exhibitions deal, for example, with art and psychiatry or literature and psyche through paintings, drawings, sculptures, photography and film, poems, diary entries, letters and e-mails. Guided tours can be arranged by calling or emailing and admission is free.

For handicapped and mentally ill people from the clinical residential area of the Alexians, the Kunsthaus is also a workplace: it contains numerous studio and work spaces for them, where they can work artistically. Thus, it also serves as an integrative meeting place for disabled and non-disabled artists. In addition, project work, workshops, conferences and lectures on the subject of art and psychiatry on outsider art and contemporary art are organized. And the activities do not end there: The Kunsthaus collaborates with universities, clinics and museums, enabling its artists to present their work beyond Münster.

The history of the Kunsthaus Kannen begins with the Kannen estate. Since 1887, it had been owned by the Alexian Brotherhood, which used the building as a social institution. Later, a specialized clinic for psychiatry was established on the estate grounds, which offered art therapies, among other things, from the 1980s on. Patients with special artistic talents were encouraged and their works were collected. In 1990, the Kunsthaus Kannen was established in a villa on the Alexian clinic grounds for archiving and documenting the artworks, and the works have been exhibited there since 1994. In 2000, the Kunsthaus moved to a new building, its current home. Since the same year, the house has also been recognized as a "Model Project Community of Disabled Artists" and is supported by the Alexians and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia - so far unique in Germany.

Please visit the Kunsthaus website for more information about Kunsthaus Kannen, its exhibitions and other offerings (website available in English).

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Further information:

• Website Alexianer Münster (website only available in German)

• Wikipedia article Outsider art (English article)