Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf, Germany

The Museum Kunstpalast is an art museum in Düsseldorf, Germany.The Museum Kunst Palast includes objects of fine arts from Classical antiquity to the present, including drawings, sculptures, a collection of more than 70,000 graphic exhibits and photographs, applied arts and design and one of Europe’s largests glass collections.

The graphic collection includes 14,000 Italian baroque graphics. The collection presents several works from Europe, Japan, Persia/Iran, beginning with the 3rd century BC. The art collection also include works from periods such as Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, the time of Goethe, the 19th century, the 20th century including a large collection of ZERO works, and the present.

The Foundation Museum Kunstpalast, from 2001 to 2011 also known in the spelling museum kunst palast, is an art museum in Duesseldorf in the Ehrenhof From 1925 to 1926 the already existing Kunstpalast of 1902 was rebuilt according to the designs of the architect Wilhelm Kreis and thus corresponded to the still visible today Building fabric From 1999 to 2000 a further rebuilding according to plans by Oswald Mathias Ungers took place

Until 2001 this institution was run by the City of Düsseldorf under the name Kunstmuseum Duesseldorf in the Court of Honor. Since then, the Museum Kunstpalast has been supported by a foundation of the city, the energy company EON and the trading group MetroGroup within the framework of a public-private partnership Of the museum includes paintings and sculptures from the Middle Ages to the present. There are also special collections on the arts, crafts and design, graphic art and a significant collection of glass

As the director general of the museum, the Swiss Beat Wismer followed the Frenchman Jean-Hubert Martin, who was appointed before the reopening in 2001. The museum employs 65 people and works with an annual budget of 15 million euros. With an annual subsidy of the state capital of 7.2 and Of the company EON of 1.1 million euros, the museum has accumulated debt in millions, which are now to be reduced with a savings program Wismer retires from 1 October 2017 His successor as general manager and artistic director of the Foundation Museum Kunstpalast becomes Felix Krämer

The history of the Museum Kunstpalast started with the patronage of artists and the arts by Elector Johann Wilhelm von der Pfalz (1658-1716) who founded one of the quasi-public European painting galleries. It transitioned through to a Municipal Art Museum, and from the latter’s foundation through to its incorporation as an entity under private law at the end of the last century. In 2001, the institution re-opened as the first public-private partnership in Germany in the field of museums, the partners being the City of Düsseldorf, E.ON AG (formerly VEBA AG), the Metro Group and Degussa.

The presentation of the collection illustrates over an area of 5,500 m² the variety of the five collections in the Museum Kunstpalast, one of the few institutions in the Rhineland to accommodate important collections of paintings, sculpture, graphic works, glass, crafts and new media under one roof.

The high points of the collection include the Rubens Gallery with the paintings “The Assumption of the Virgin” and “Venus and Adonis” by the gallery’s eponym, as well as other painters active at the court of Elector Jan Wellem, such as Frans van Douven and the aforementioned sculptor Grupello. The Rubens Gallery will be supplemented by a Decoratori Gallery with exhibits from the collection of Baroque oil sketches.

A further strength of the collection is the field of 18th and 19th-century painting which has been extended in recent years with new acquisitions such as the “Portrait of the Improvisation Virtuoso Teresa Bandettini-Landucci of Lucca” by Angelika Kauffmann, which will now being presented here for the first time.

Other highlights will be the artist rooms – designed by the artists themselves – such as Nam June Paik, who attached his multimonitor installation “Fish Flies on Sky” (1983–1985) beneath one of the ceilings, or the room with works by Joseph Beuys, or the ZERO-Lichtraum, set up jointly by Heinz Mack, Otto Piene and Günter Uecker at the documenta in Kassel in 1964 as a homage to Fontana, and a permanent part of the museum’s collection since the 1970s.

Another unique element of the Museum’s collection are the legendary “Creamcheese” (1967–1977) and Thomas Schütte’s room installation “Furniture for ‘One Man Houses’” (2005), which in 2010 was given to the museum on permanent loan from the collection of the Stadtsparkasse Düsseldorf.

The newly displayed galleries will also allow the public to see a number of newly acquired and freshly restored works as well as new permanent loans: for example “Large Head with Small Man” (2010) by Stephan Balkenhol recently loaned to the collection.

The painting collection of the museum has three main themes: Old Paintings, 19th Century Paintings, with special attention to the Düsseldorf School of Painting and Modern Painting. The art of the 20th century and contemporary art are combined in the modern department And object art new media collected

Picture Gallery:

The roots of the first collection section of the picture gallery are found in the Electoral Collection of Johann Wilhelm, who expanded the small collection that he found in Duesseldorf with his second wife, the Princess Anna Maria Luisa de ‘Medici and by generous patronage artists and musicians To the court and made the city a European art metropolis However, the collection came to Munich in 1805, where it now belongs to the Old Pinakothek. Today, the gallery still has only 50 works belonging to the Electoral Collection Three of these works are part of the permanent collection of the museum : Ascension of Mary and Venus and Adonis by Peter Paul Rubens as well as Samson and Delila by Joos van Winghe In 1846 the association for the erection of a picture gallery of Düsseldorf 415 paintings, especially the Düsseldorf painter’s school, from the deposits of the Royal Museums in Breslau, were paid as compensation for the loss Trains The collection of Lucas Cranach the Elder, the unrivaled pair of Lucas Cranach the Elder, is a moralizing genre with a portrayal of the vice. In contrast, Allegory The Kiss of Justice and Peace of an Antwerp Master puts the virtue out With the painting landscape With Tobias and the angel of Jan van Scorel is a significant work of landscape painting in the museum’s collection Another important work is the painting man with a burning candle attributed to a successor to Godfried Schalcke; It is a virtuoso example of the one-figure portrait and genre painting and exhibits an extraordinary play of light and shadow. The image Death of Cleopatra by Jean-Baptiste Regnault is an example of French painting of the 18th century with Napoleonic Classicism

The painting The Flight to Egypt by Julius Schnorr of Carolsfeld, for example, is shown in the paintings of the 19th century. Another painting from this period is the landscape of the Spring Evening of Ludwig Richter from 1844, which had discovered these motifs quite late Caspar David Friedrich has a picture of the cross in the mountains in the collection as well as works by Adolph Menzel, Max Liebermann and Arnold Böcklin. The Düsseldorf painter’s school is strongly represented in the museum collection. The works of the artists of this school are The Old Academy of Andreas Achenbach, The Wetterhorn by Johann Wilhelm Schirmer as well as workers in front of the magistrate of Johann Peter Hasenclever in the museum Many of these paintings have a close relationship with the city of Düsseldorf and the Düsseldorf Art Academy

Modern section:

The main focus of the collection is the Expressionism, the special federation, the Young Rhineland. The main focus of the collection is the Expressionism, the special federation, the Young Rhineland, the most important feature of the collection are the paintings, sculptures, object works and the art of the new media of the entire 20th century up to contemporary art , Neue Sachlichkeit, Bauhauskunst (Constructivism), the Informel, the art around the ZERO group, Joseph Beuys and his pupils and young contemporary art. The collection includes works from the early 20th century such as Paula Modersohn-Becker’s Breeding Mother 1902 and Murnau (landscape with tree trunk) by Wassily Kandinsky from the year 1909 Likewise, works like Herbstrausch (Bacchanal) by Walter Ophey from 1912, Franz Marcs The foxes from the year 1913 and August Mackes Four girls from 1912 to it belong also pictures of Otto Dix, Erich Buchholz, Giorgio de Chirico, Emil Nolde, and Ernst Ludwig K The ZERO space light room Hommage à Fontana, 1964 and Eurasienstab, 1968, by Joseph Beuys An example of a work of recent art is raid on the pine road of Bertram Jesdinsky from 1987

Old sculpture and crafts:

The collection of sculptures and craftsmanship of the museum art palace is based on the collection of the old Kunstgewerbemuseum. In the further development of the collection a focus was placed on the sculpture of the medieval period. In 1929, high-ranking medieval sculptures were acquired from the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen Collection and in the 1930s Works Purchased From dismantled private collections are sculptures such as the Oertelmadonna of an unknown master or the Saint Christopher of the Master of Ottobeuren, both important works of the southern German Spätgotik Also Lower Rhine and Dutch sculptures collected After the Second World War less works were purchased, but there were more donations and gifts Loans With the MJ Binder Collection, small sculptures and sculptures from late Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque came into the museum collection

The collection includes important Madonna depictions such as the Regensburg Madonna in which the artistic portrayal of the human approach and dialogue between Mary and the Jesus child comes to the fore. In addition the collection contains a Beautiful Madonna from the epoch of the international Gothic at the end of the 14th century from the Salzburg Hof In addition to these sculptures, the collection also includes works such as the Dreikönigsaltar from the year 1516 from the Upper Rhine or the Kupfertafel Prophet Ezekiel from Hildesheim, which emerged between 1160 and 1180. This tablet is an example of the medieval melting technique and is connected to works, In St Petersburg and in the Louvre. As is customary in Romanesque, the design is strictly formal and links to the book painting

The collection of Renaissance works includes a larger collection of Italian bronzes such as Judith with the head of the Holofernes of Alessandro Vittoria. The two walnut figures Adam and Eve from Southern Germany or the southern Netherlands, with their anatomical structure, are the typical canon of the high Renaissance Already in question The two figures are related to their gestures and perspectives The focus of the baroque collection is the academy collection, taken in 1932, which includes, among other things, a group of sculptures by the court sculptor Gabriel de Grupello Above all works of the southern German baroque sculpture are shown

From the collection of the old Kunstgewerbemuseum come furniture, dishes and cutlery One of the exhibited pieces is a cabinet cabinet from southern Germany from the beginning of the 17th century, which clearly shows the Italian influences north of the Alps. Furthermore, trophies, cups and tankards of gold as well as table – Collection A particularly prominent piece is a kissed and paired tablet of cast silver, which dates from the beginning of the 17th century from Antwerp. Contrary to the otherwise depicted sufferings of Christ, the Diisseldorf table contains the verses of Jesus at the Lord’s Supper

Graphic collection:

The collection contains 70000 drawings and prints from the 15th to the 21st century. It contains works from all major European art landscapes. With its collection of Italian baroque drawings, it is one of the most important reference collections alongside the Louvre, Albertina, Windsor Castle and Farnesina

The collection comprises the 14,000 drawings collection of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, which has been a permanent loan to the museum since 1932. This collection was built by Lambert Krahe; In 1778 he sold them to the Bergische Landsstands, which they handed over to the academy for study purposes. It provides an overview of the German art of drawing from the 16th to the 18th century. Among them are a transfiguration of one of ten well-known leaves with a scenic content of Hermann tom Ring as well as works by Christoph Schwartz and Carl Loth With the drawing Susanna in the bath of Albrecht Altdorfer, the collection contains the only pictorial overall design for one of his paintings. Besides, drawings from the 16 and 17 century from the Netherlands are part of the collection Among them is for example The allegorical woodcut Hercules kills Cacus of Hendrick Goltzius and the genre scenes The Curious of Leonaert
Bramer showing a group of people peeking through a keyhole The French drawings include the most comprehensive group of landscape drawings Gaspard Dughets as well as a group of chalk drawings Jean Charles Frontier’s works of the professors of the Kunstakademie and the artists of the Dusseldorf painting school are also among the French drawings Part of the collection

The most important part of the collection of the Kunstakademie consists of the Italian drawings, among others, from Domenico Campagnola, Bartolomeo Passarotti, Andrea del Sarto, Federico Barocci and Luca Cambiaso. Also known artists such as Michelangelo, Paolo Veronese, Perugino, Giorgio Vasari and Raphael Among the collections are, among others, the portrait of a young man of Lorenzo di Credi. The works of the Roman Baroque, of which the museum has several hundred drawings, are particularly famous. For example, some studies and sketches for a statue of Saint Longinus and the Drawing Grotesque head of Gian Lorenzo Bernini shown by Pietro da Cortona the drawing Throne of the Madonna and Child, John the Baptist and the Saint Stefan By Giuseppe Passeri are 1000 drawings like the composition design for the fresco return Jason from Kolchis in the collection

Another part of the museum’s collection comes from the Museum of Fine Arts, which was disbanded in 1926. It consists mainly of portrait and ornament engravings, but also of four etchings by Juste de Juste. These show bizarre pyramids of men and have no experimental character Collection was completed in 1928 with works from the collection of Laurenz Heinrich Hetjen in 1928, including Hendrick Goltzius’ woodcut Clair-obscur, on which one of the Heraclestates is to be seen. Furthermore, the collection was complemented by works by artists who in the 19th century In Dusseldorf Despite the focus of the collection of drawings of the 19th century of the Düsseldorf painting school, drawings by Caspar David Friedrich, Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Adolph Menzel were also acquired

Drawings of the 20th century have been collected since the foundation of the museum, but more than 500 graphic works have been lost by the persecution of degenerate art by the National Socialists. In 1964 the museum inherited prints and watercolors of Expressionism, including Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, August Macke and Wassily Kandinsky In addition, works by Max Ernst, Lyonel Feininger and Paul Klee are part of the collection, as well as Max Beckmann’s sketches for the painting Die Nacht. With over 560 lithographs, woodcuts and etchings, the collection has a large part of Conrad’s prints Felixmüllers, as well as about 2000 works by Walter Ophey

Other Collections:
In addition to European art, the collection also includes a small collection of Japanese art for many years. In addition to a collection of 88 Tsuba from the Georg Oeder Collection (1846-1931) and the donation by Hans Lühdorf (1910-1983) of a Japanese book covering more than 400 sheets In 2004, the museum received a donation from the extensive collection of Netsuke by Bruno Werkelmann (1920-2010), a collection of 19 century wooden prints, mainly by Utagawa-style artists such as Kunisada and Kuniyoshi,

The collection of Islamic art craftsmanship of the Museum Kunstpalast goes back to the first director of the Kunstgewerbemuseum, Heinrich Frauberger (1845-1920), who in the 1880s and 1890s systematically expanded this area by acquiring handwritings, miniatures, Koran bindings, textiles, Wood and ceramic objects

Glass Museum Hentrich:
The collection of glass in the glass museum Hentrich is the most recent collection of this kind of importance in Europe and the most comprehensive collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. The glass products of the prehistoric collection of the former Düsseldorf art trade museum Between 1928 and 1940, this collection gradually gained by the purchase of important private collections But it was not until 1963 that Helmut Hentrich ‘s decision to bring his collection to the museum was completed. Until his death in 2001 the collections of the collection, which had been part of his collection since 1990, Honoring the title of the glass museum Hentrich. With the collection Hentrich, the collection of glass was particularly strengthened, because its main focus was on ancient and Islamic glass art, as well as art nouveau, art deco and art nouveau Nets The collection is further enhanced by important donations, bequests and long-term loans, such as Italian and Czech glasses from the Steinberg Foundation’s collection, medieval glasses from the Karl Amendt Collection and Dutch glasses from the Sammlung Knecht-Drenth. The museum’s own purchases since the 1960s Focus on modern and contemporary glass art

The oldest pieces of the collection date from pre-Roman times The most important vessel from this period is an Achaemenid bowl with a polished lancet decoration from the late fifth century BC The glass art of the Roman Empire is represented in the collection with more than 300 vessels The Islamic empires of the Middle East Part of the collection From the time before the era of the forest glass in the Middle Ages, a unique shell, from the time around the year 1300, is due to its complete state of preservation. There are also works of the Venetian glass art of the 15th century An ornamental vessel in the form of a mosque lamp, which according to current knowledge is a single piece and shows the influences of the Islamic glass production in Europe. In addition, there are court glass jars of the 17, 18 and 19 century By Louis Comfort Tiffany as a petal and a leaf bowl from the time between 1897 and 1905

The glass art of the 20th century is also exhibited in the museum in its diversity. There are works of the art of glasswork, art deco, the Bauhaus, the northern European countries and Italy. An example of these works is the mosaic shell of Carlo Scarpa

Since August 2008, the art historian Dedo von Kerssenbrock-Krosigk has been heading the Glasmuseum. He has succeeded the successor of the long-term director Helmut Ricke

special exhibitions:
The first large – scale, special exhibitions in the Kunstmuseum were arranged in the 1970s. The exhibition European Baroque Sculpture in Grupello, founded in 1971 by Christian Theuerkauff, was launched. The exhibition focused on classical and contemporary modernism Was the exhibition of works by the Russian avant-garde from the George Costakis collection, including works by Marc Chagall and Wassily Kandinsky. Exhibitions on the Düsseldorf painting school, which emphasized special aspects such as their influence on Scandinavian and American art Or the school itself, as well as the history of glass art

To reopen the museum in December 1994, the most extensive special exhibition with works by leading modern artists from the collection of Parisian art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler was shown. This exhibition attracted more than 160000 visitors. In addition, exhibitions on glass art, contemporary design and contemporary art were presented Japanese color wood cuts In the summer of 2006 Spencer Tunick realized his first body installations from nude people in Germany in and around the museum kunst palast. The resulting photographs and video installations were presented in the autumn of a special exhibition in the museum from 15 September 2007 to 6 January 2008 The exhibition Bonjour Russia, showing works from the Hermitage Museum Saint Petersburg, the Russian Museum, the Pushkin Museum and the Tretyakov Gallery, including paintings by Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, K Andinsky, Chagall, Henri Matisse and Kasimir Severinovich Malwitsch A total of around 256,000 visitors came to this exhibition, which made them one of the most successful shows in the house

The museum continued to pursue the strategy of organizing blockbuster exhibitions. In 2012, the museum presented the El Greco exhibition and modern art, the first major exhibition on El Greco in Germany for 100 years. She presented the works of the Spanish painter, such as those of modern artists Attempted to demonstrate its influence on modernism El Greco and modernity were criticized critically Thus the selection of non-meaningful works by modern artists was problematized The museum had shown, for example, sculptures by Wilhelm Lehmbruck, although no reception of El Grecos was to be demonstrated to him; Instead of a meaningful drawing by August Macke, paintings were exhibited by El Greco, in which a reference to El Greco was not clearly recognizable. It was also criticized that the attributions to El Greco were quite generous in some works, and that two works were arranged by the auction house Christie’s in the exhibition, which gave such a proximity to the current art market

In 2011, Dusseldorf collector Willi Kemp donated his collection, Ingrid and Willi Kemp, to the museum, which has exhibited selected collections of works from the collection since then, including about 1200 contemporary art objects from the collection, most recently Gotthard Graubner, Karl Otto Götz, Winfred Gaul, Bernard Schultze and Carl Buchheister

With a large work gallery by Andreas Gursky, “the most expensive and successful photo-artist in the world”, (23 September 2012 to 13 January 2013, extended until 3 February 2013) and an exhibition of 70 works exclusively created in Düsseldorf Candida Höfers (14 September 2013 to 9 February 2014), the Kunstmuseum presented representative photo exhibitions of two of the most famous pupils of Becher Becher in Düsseldorf

In 2015 the exhibition Wim Wenders: Landscapes, Photographs was shown. A work exhibition by the Spanish artist Francisco de Zurbarán was also shown in 2015 From October 2016 to January 2017, a representative theme exhibition entitled “Behind the Curtain” with works from Tizian to Christo was shown July 2017, the museum presents a representative Lucas Cranach exhibition, together with works by modern artists based on Cranach

Every month, a work from the collection of the Kunstpalast is presented by a scientific employee of the House under the motto “Kunstwerk des Monats”. The “Kunstwerk des Monats” is a short guide every first Wednesday and Thursday of the month

“SPOT ON” is a series of exhibitions every six months in the Kunstpalast, in which works or groups of works are shown in differently staged project spaces, which must be rediscovered or rediscovered. For example, new acquisitions for collection, current research results, conclusion of restitution procedures or restoration successes

Every year the “Museum of Fine Arts” is held as a guest event “Die Grosse”