Centre for International Light Art

The Centre for International Light Art (German: Zentrum für Internationale Lichtkunst, CILA) is an art museum located in Unna, Germany. Founded in 2001, it is the world's only museum exclusively dedicated to the collection and presentation of light art. The institution occupies a distinctive position in the international museum landscape by focusing solely on this medium, combining permanent installations by major contemporary artists with temporary exhibitions, educational programming, and an annual award for outstanding achievement in the field.

The Centre for International Light Art was established in 2001, when it moved into the buildings of the former Linden brewery in the center of Unna. From its inception, the museum was conceived as a specialized institution with no direct equivalent worldwide. Beyond exhibition programming, the CILA functions as a forum for discussion and hosts symposia, conferences, and workshops focused on light as an artistic medium. Since 2009, the museum has also administered the International Light Award in cooperation with the Innogy Stiftung für Energie und Gesellschaft, an annual prize recognizing outstanding light artists. The museum participates in the regional cultural project Hellweg - Ein Lichtweg (Hellweg - A Way of Light froth), which connects light art installations along the historical Westphalian Hellweg travel route. Within a few miles of the CILA, this network includes works by Rosemarie Trockel, Kazuo Katase, Michael Batz, Claudia Wissmann, and Jan Philip Scheibe.

The permanent exhibition presents works by twelve internationally recognized light artists: James Turrell, Keith Sonnier, Mario Merz, Joseph Kosuth, Mischa Kuball, Rebecca Horn, Christina Kubisch, Jan van Munster, François Morellet, Christian Boltanski, Brigitte Kowanz, and Olafur Eliasson. These artists have realized spatial installations within the museum's distinctive underground spaces, including former cellar vaults, cooling rooms, and fermentation tanks. The collection emphasizes immersive, site-specific works that engage directly with architectural space and the phenomenology of light. The museum's programming extends beyond its permanent holdings through a robust schedule of temporary exhibitions, which have included monographic shows and thematic group presentations.

The signature work in the permanent collection is James Turrell's Third Breath, 2005, which became part of the museum's holdings on 1 February 2009. This camera obscura installation consists of two interconnected rooms: a lower cubic space (Camera Obscura Space) where visitors observe an image of the sky projected onto a polished marble floor through a lens, and an upper cylindrical space (Sky Space) where the sky is visible directly through an opening in the ceiling. The acquisition was celebrated with a four-month accompanying exhibition, James Turrell - Geometry of Light. Another defining installation is Mario Merz's Fibonacci numbers, mounted on the brewery chimney, which serves as a landmark for the institution. The underground spaces also contain significant installations by Christian Boltanski, Johannes Dinnebier, and Andreas Oldörp, among others.

The CILA is housed in the former Linden brewery, a red brick industrial complex dating from the nineteenth century located at the heart of Unna. The museum's architecture preserves and repurposes the brewery's industrial structures, with light art installations integrated into former cellar vaults, underground passages, cooling rooms, and fermentation basins. This adaptive reuse of industrial heritage provides a particularly apt setting for light art, as the subterranean spaces offer controlled environments where artificial light can be experienced without natural light interference. The most visible architectural intervention is Mario Merz's Fibonacci numbers installation on the brewery chimney, which functions as both artwork and institutional landmark.

The Centre for International Light Art is situated in central Unna, in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The museum maintains an official website at www.lichtkunst-unna.de, which provides information in both German and English, and offers a digital tour of the collection. Visitors can access the permanent exhibition featuring the twelve core artists as well as rotating temporary exhibitions. Recent temporary exhibitions have included MORELLET (2016/2017), a retrospective curated by François Morellet himself shortly before his death; ¡DARK! + Dark II (two, too) (2015/2016) with Anthony McCall, Diana Ramaekers, Regine Schumann, Vera Röhm, and Lucinda Devlin; and Jan van Munster - L ich T (2014). The museum's ongoing exhibition program continues with shows such as HYPERsculptures (2022/23) and Radiant (2024).