MUENSTER, Germany—Florian Voss, an 18-year-old rickshaw driver who good-naturedly pedaled me through a Muenster park in a downpour, has watched the city change since he could walk. “I go across this bridge every morning to school, and now there is someone singing under it,” he said as we stood beneath the Torminbrucke admiring the disembodied vocal stylings of Susan Philipsz.

Philipsz wistful song is part of her sound piece for Muenster’s once-a-decade international exhibition, Sculpture Projects Muenster.

Just as contemporary art can be as much about the creative process as the end product, traveling around Muenster to view—and hear—the Sculpture Projects infuses the experience with a sense of adventure and discovery. The journey provides varied perspectives on this charming German city, as well as on the interaction of the site-specific works to the urban environment.

The project originated in 1977 as an effort to enlighten citizens about modern sculpture in the wake of the less-than-welcoming reception for American kinetic artist George Rickey’s donation of a work to Muenster and its residents. Every ten years since then, international artists have been invited to create sculptures for the public site of their choice, renewing the dialogue between art and public space by addressing issues brought to light in the intervening decade.  

“Consider the enormous time between each exhibition,” said Project Coordinator Christine Litz. “If you go back ten years ago, it has been a totally different life.” Over the years, participating artists have responded to changes not only in society and urban spaces, but also in artistic concepts and materials. Litz contrasts the social critique and interactive experiments of 1997 and 2007 with the work of the Muenster pioneers, who “were dealing with the idea of the possibilities of art.”

Some of those earlier works are still on view in the city, including large concrete structures like Donald Judd’s untitled concentric rings and Claes Oldenberg’s Pool Balls on the shores of the manmade Lake Aa in the city’s expansive parkland. These once-controversial pieces are among the more than 50 sculptures that have become permanent fixtures of the local landscape, as well as referents for successive generations of invitees and viewers.

This year, for example, French artist and curator Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster has replicated a selection of works commissioned for the last three projects (1977, 1987, and 1997) in quarter-scale and arranged them in relation to their positions on the city map—except that her miniature stand-ins are set about a field with sloping edges, like props staged in an amphitheater. This open-air diorama condenses the Sculpture Projects’ history into a “greatest hits” compilation or Cliff Notes companion, which first-time visitors can peruse to contextualize the new additions.   

Only time, and Muenster’s inhabitants—whose appraisals, according to Litz, can inform which new pieces the city exercises its option to buy (even the homeless weigh in by awarding a prize for the artwork that most represents the reality of life on these streets)—will tell whether the newcomers stand up to their predecessors.

Horst Heiringhoff, the enthusiastic art collector and proprietor of Central Hotel Muenster, which is decorated with some of his acquisitions, notes that this year’s artists are not as renowned as the class of 1987 (which included Richard Artschwager, George Brecht, Jenny Holzer, Rebecca Horn, and Richard Tuttle, among others). But the relative anonymity of the latest crop encourages interested parties to learn more about them and study their maneuvers, he adds. Upon my arrival, Heiringhoff proudly shared his book of signed sketches by art stars he had hosted over the years and lamented that Ilya Kabakov had just canceled his reservation because he was already worn out from previous stops on the Grand Tour.