Jan Hoet views MARTa Herford as a forum for young and contemporary art that primarily explores the close, complex relationships between art, design, architecture and industry. The various exhibitions are geared towards an exchange between the traditionally separate realms of art and design. As far as the curators are concerned, design is not purely functional and commercial, but rather a field of creative, processual experimentation. Moreover, the character of art today has also changed. Previously autonomous and self-referential, the boundaries are now dissolving and art is steadily absorbing non-artistic disciplines. MARTa Herford is a kind of laboratory where current issues of art are questioned. By means of prospective exhibitions inside but also outside the museum, MARTa Herford examines important concepts such as autonomy and function, the unique and the multiple, modern mobility and the muséification of the object, and the decorative and the narrative.