The impulse for this festschrift was given by this year’s awarding of the ART COLOGNE prize to Rudolf Zwirner. It hinges on Zwirner’s role as gallery owner and art dealer in a time of fundamental social change. Art was “carried to market” for the first time in 1967 with the foundation of the Cologne Kunstmarkt, an occurrence that found its counterpart in the tangible American Pop art and its loans to the world of consumer goods, as well as in the changed attitude of the artist as producer. Rudolf Zwirner was the first gallery owner to put his weight behind the American Pop art movement in Germany. In close contact and exchange with collectors Wolfgang Hahn and Peter Ludwig, it found acceptance in Western Europe among both the public and collectors.