‘I try to make them feel as ignorant as possible’: German museum’s ‘grumpy guide’ is surprise hit

Performance artist’s aggressive art historian shouts at visitors and insults curators – and his tours are sold out

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n a recent autumn evening in Düsseldorf’s Kunstpalast museum, the guide Joseph Langelinck paused next to a Renaissance sculpture of a man with a wooden club and challenged his flock of 18 visitors to name the mythical hero depicted.

“Hercules?” a woman in the front row proposed in a soft voice. “If you know the answer, why can’t you tell us in a way that those at the back can hear you, too?” Langelinck admonished the visitor, before challenging her to name the 12 labours in chronological order. A non-answer elicited an eye roll and a tut. “Oh god, I feel like I’m back at school,” sighed the woman, 62-year-old Corinna Schröder.

The museum advertises Langelinck’s tours, which cost €7, as “grumpy” and “highly unpleasant”, though that might still be an understatement. Over the course of the 70-minute walk, the ponytailed art historian points fingers into visitors’ faces, tells them off for checking their phones or sitting down, and berates them for their general ignorance, all while stomping through the palatial corridors of the Kunstpalast at breakneck speed.