Outer space—infinite expanses: Like most art spaces created by Otto Piene, his Lichtraum at Leopold-Hoesch-Museum in Düren also awakens spherical associations with science fiction. Perforated boxes and balls function as projectors of an abstract shadow-theater planetarium, which, depending on the fantasy of the viewer, throws creation myths, space expeditions—or the light of profane disco balls onto its walls.

The works of Olafur Eliasson challenge the viewers’ senses. Whether he has water falls cascading from bridges, people walking through a scent tunnel, or colorful fog wafting past museum windows: Again and again he gets us to rediscover natural phenomena. In the exhibition of the Langen Foundation, his works play with reflections, perspectives, and the power of light. A large backlit projection screen submerges the hall in constantly alternating red, green, and blue. This Room for All Colours carries visitors along on an emotional—as well as physical—journey of colors. Light is not simply an artistic means for Eliasson, however. For school children in Africa he designed an inexpensive, solar-powered, LED reading lamp.

Hidden in the cellars of the former brewery Linden in Unna is the worldwide only museum that presents light art exclusively. Whether Christian Boltansky performs his Totentanz II as a shadow play with devils, ghosts, and fairies, whether we stride through the Tunnel of Tears by neon artist Keith Sonnier or wait for the blue hour in James Turrell’s Skyspace: Many works arouse a solemn mystical mood—even if the perception of light as an artistic and physical phenomena stands in the foreground in Unna.

Even in the Westphalian town of Hellweg (literally, light path), darkness sets in at night. What used to trouble travelers in earlier times is today—thanks to Edison—no longer a problem. And since here, in the eastern part of the Ruhr Area, light art has become an artistic subject, not only lanterns glow at night today but also, for example, a water site designed by Rosemarie Trockel. Images of magnificent fountains are projected onto plumes of water and a pulsating rod of light, which reminds of an over-dimensional light sword. All are stations on a fascinating journey of light.

How is the blobfish on the ocean floor of the South Pacific doing? From our human perspective, his face expresses great sadness. Yet the fish is perfectly adapted to its gloomy environment at a depth of 1000 meters. For most living organisms, light is essential. The LWL-Museum of Natural History in Münster examines the absence and significance of light in the scientific spirit of discovery.

The moon has risen—and yet, Tobias Rehberger’s artistic variation has nothing in common with Matthias Claudius’ devout poetry. Instead The Moon in Alabama is a type of decentralized world time clock: Eleven round light balls shine as moons above transformer cabinets all around the central station since 2014. Each is dedicated to one town: from Tokyo to Ibiza to Wanne-Eickel. When the moon shines in the respective town, a light goes on in Münster as well.

Hands grasp at nothing, eyes seek a point to fix on, and we cannot distinguish the learned points of reference for orientation in space: The pictorial material of James Turrell’s works is entirely immaterial. It consists only of colored light that he stages in ingenious spatial situations so that the contrasts between planes and space, between light and color seem to dissolve. For the exhibition The Problem of God, Turrell realized the large light installation Grey Dawn (1991/92) at K21. It allows us to experience the unrepresentable, the invisible—a unique experience of sublimeness and transcendency. Works by Hubert Kiecol, Robert Rauschenberg, and Ad Reinhardt supplement this visual pleasure.

Like a Damascene conversion the #Artpilgrimage turns from the deadly sins to the path of virtue. The exhibition Caritas in Paderborn takes a look at the early Christian period, when devotion and charity revolutionized social interaction. This development only began to change with industrialization. And since then? Today the imagery of St. Martin halving his cloak and the generous modesty of St. Francis of Assisi are succeeded by new art histories about the treatment of refugees, the starving, the lonely deceased...

What caritas looks like apart from prayer rooms and exhibition spaces, we can experience in Bethel. In the “House of God” all belong on an equal basis, living, learning, working—simply as well as they can. Established as an institution for children and adolescents suffering from epilepsy, today the foundation is the epitome of “love thy neighbor.” People in trouble, with physical or mental impairments, in old age, with special illnesses, or in their final days here receive the help they need in a matter-of-fact manner of living together. Architecturally speaking, the neighborhood has grown around the worthy cause since 1867. This worldwide unique facility in Bielefeld is worth a visit.

Crèches, pilgrimage, and a Smachtlappen, for decades that’s what the former Museum Heimathaus Münsterland in Telgte was known for. Until this cultural “market niche” became too confining. Today the newly conceived house is called RELíGIO – Westfälisches Museum für religiöse Kultur. And besides the successful crèche exhibitions, temporary exhibitions about popular piety and everyday religion attract visitors, at the moment for instance Pilgerwelten. The Smachtlappen—Low German for the precious Westphalian Lenten veil—today hangs in its own annex. The cloth was used for devotions during the fasting period from 1623 on. An ideal stop on your #Art Pilgrimage.

Münster is overflowing with religious history and a contemporary life of faith, historical conflicts such as the bloody defeat of the Anabaptist Kingdom but also with current church disputes such as the fight for municipal subsidies to finance the German Catholic Congress in 2018. Every evening the tower watchwoman of St. Lambert’s Church swathes the locals in a homogenous tone again. From a height of seventy-five meters she blows her horn every half hour and in the event of danger. But approaching catastrophes for the pleasant town with the lively student scene have not been seen for a long time.

Miners are often faithful people but what happens to their faith after the coal mines have closed down? In Bottrop the mine dump Haniel was transformed into a place of pilgrimage: The Stations of the Cross remind of the Passion of Christ. If you follow the fifteen stations, you will find bronze panels and former mining equipment. The unique project lets you forget the ascent of 160 meters. Once at the top, you will find the summit cross made of guide rails from a mine shaft. Whether it is the original crucifix from the visit of John Paul II in 1987, as is often claimed, or a replica is meanwhile a matter of faith. As much, by the way, as the impact of the Totems, more than 100 colorful railroad ties made by the Spanish artist Agustín Ibarrola on the mine dump.

With its five spider-like arms of exposed concrete, it stands like an open book on the edge of Duisburg’s inner harbor: The structure of the Jewish community center designed by Zvi Hecker refers to the Five Books of Moses—or to an open hand. It opens up to as many interior and exterior views as there are interpretations of the deconstructivist solitaire. One of the views is onto the adjacent garden of land artist Dani Karavan.

Right next door to the futuristic planetarium, the New Synagogue with its two-dimensional Star of David design attracts the eyes of all drivers passing by on the B226. Hidden behind the facade of the seventeen-meter-high cube of Israeli stone is a hall vaulted by a golden yellow baldachin. On the East wall of the building designed by Peter Schmitz stands the Torah ark as a visual vanishing point. A house of God that must be seen from the inside as well.

The Berliner Philharmonie brought Hans Scharoun, the precursor of organic architecture, well-deserved fame worldwide. His Church of St. John in Bochum has much more modest but just as appealing dimensions. Even in his only realized sacred building the master architect avoids the right angle like the plague. In the harmonic interplay between the pavilion roof of exposed concrete and the red bricks and the stone floor, the interior reminds a bit of a Waldorf school. And indeed: The church is the focal point of the anthroposophically oriented Christian Community.

Like father, like son. Gottfried Böhm (born 1920) built prominent churches in NRW; Paul Böhm (born 1959) tries his hand on an equally impressive mosque. With its elegant minarets and transparent tiered dome, the controversial Central Mosque in Cologne-Ehrenfeld has the stuff of an architectural icon of modern Islam. If it ever—plagued by ongoing disputes between the DITIB community and the architectural office about possible construction defects—gets finished.

The former synagogue in Pulheim, which survived the November pogroms only because it had previously been sold to a farmer as storage area, is today one of the most stirring art venues in NRW. Every year contemporary artists exhibit in the small gallery and dedicate themselves to artistic memory work—or defiantly deny this mandate, like Tony Cragg who evades any form of historical engagement with his two amorphous giants.

The building completed in 1880, todays K21 Ständehaus on the idyllic pond called Kaiserteich, has come a long way: from parliament of the Prussian Rhine province to Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia to contemporary museum.
The huge glass dome covers not only the celestial installation in orbit by Thomas Saraceno but also, starting on 26 September 2015, the exhibition The Problem of God spread over three stories. It is the final destination of all four #Artpilgrimage discovery tours in NRW.

We have a memory flash of Beuys planting 7000 trees in Kassel on the occasion of documenta: In late October 100 apple trees of old Lower Rhine varieties are to be planted in Mönchengladbach within the framework of the Museum Abteiberg exhibition. Ideas are already growing at the museum, ideas that trace the symbolism of the apple, reflect its cultivation and mechanization, or show the apple as Pawel Freisler does: as a meditative object with carvings.

The Apocalypse has a completely different concept of paradise: A New Jerusalem of glass-like gold and cubic in shape shines brightly. That the worldly Jerusalem can also induce visions is the subject of the work Looking for Jesus by the Polish artist Katarzyna Kozyra, who investigates the so-called Jerusalem syndrome. With her video work at the endpoint of the #Artpilgrimage in the exhibition The Problem of God, she addresses the sudden identification of visitors of the holy sites with biblical figures.