The art academy was launched in 1990 as a “talent factory”, “a new type of art academy”, an “electronic Bauhaus”, a “bird of paradise”, an “experiment with no guarantee of success” and also an “unloved child” of Cologne’s cultural landscape. Initially, it was primarily associated with the closure of the former Cologne Werkschulen and thus with the loss of training in “fine arts” and the “end of the printed word”.
Today, the KHM is firmly and successfully part of the canon of German art and film schools. It has remained true to and unique in its project-oriented approach (no master classes, cross-disciplinary supervision by professors, diploma degrees in undergraduate and postgraduate studies), which produces “cross-over talents” between art, media, film and science.