Cultural Institution · Sculpture Park · Wentorf bei Hamburg
Woods
Art Institute
Living art, modern culture. Taken out of the city, embedded in nature: enlarged, enriched, distilled. The permanent home of the Sammlung Reinking.
Address
Golfstrasse 5 · 21465 Wentorf bei Hamburg (DE)
Founder
Rik Reinking — collector, dealer and curator
About
The Woods Art Institute opens new possibilities — for making, collecting, teaching and experiencing art — at the edge of Hamburg. It is not conceived as a counter-proposition to nature, but as its living extension.
The WAI's primary interest is in the idea — and the many ways humanity has given form to ideas: literature, film, music, philosophy, art and science. Within the institute, the central exhibition house presents the Sammlung Reinking; outside, a growing sculpture park and a historic arboretum extend that conversation into the landscape. Artist studios, workshops, a library, seminar rooms, a boarding house and a café are all built around the same idea: that culture is not ornament but an existential part of how we change as people.
The Site
A 1914 country estate at the western edge of the Sachsenwald, designed by Rudolph Jürgens as the residence of a Belgian merchant — now a campus of thatched half-timbered houses, a sober 1940s building, and the modern WAI Galleries.
- WAI Galleries
Roughly 2,500 m² of exhibition space presenting rotating chapters of the Sammlung Reinking and temporary projects with invited artists.
- WAI Studios
Twelve artist studios on site for residencies, productions and long-form research.
- WAI Boarding House
Guest rooms inside the historic ensemble for artists, scholars and visitors taking part in the programme.
- Sculpture Park & Arboretum
A terraced parkland with up to 48 m of elevation change, ending at the banks of the river Bille — host to a growing collection of outdoor sculpture among the historic trees.
- Library, Workshops & Café
Quiet reading rooms, production workshops, seminar spaces and a café — all conceived as places of exchange across disciplines.
Resident collection
Sammlung Reinking
Around 200 artists from the 1960s onward — Informel, Fluxus, Minimalism, Conceptual Art, Urban Art, contemporary painting and indigenous artefacts. The WAI Galleries are its first permanent home, with rotating chapters chosen by the collector and invited curators.
Visit
The galleries and sculpture park are open to the public; private collection tours run by appointment.
Woods Art Institute
Golfstrasse 5 · 21465 Wentorf bei Hamburg (DE)
info@woodsartinstitute.com
Content adapted from woodsartinstitute.com. © Woods Art Institute.