Looking for Hope for Hapiness

“You come to university for education, for research, for meetings, and the great thing about our art collection is, you don’t come here specially for it, so the art has to work harder here than in a museum. In the midst of all the running around, the chasing about, the art has to announce itself, ‘Look at me, notice me!’
Schimmel’s work is hung in a place that I pass by quite frequently, but I only realised much later that it was a work of art.

The work is actually very accessible, it really reveals itself to you, but only if you literally take time for it. Only when you stand still does the work move.

It’s a bit like Johan Cruyff said, ‘You only start to see it when you’re wise to it’.
The way in which Hope for Happiness works is a nice reference to the preconditions for education and research – there too we are in need of slowing down, quieting down.
In discussions about art, research and education, too often things are approached from a shallow perspective. We go straight to monetary value, or worry about public support. But art, like education and research, is about other ways of thinking, about investigating alternative values. That is where real innovation commences.”