The Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte or MKK (''Museum of Art and Cultural History'') is a municipal museum in

Dortmund Dortmund (; ; ) is the third-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia, after Cologne and Düsseldorf, and the List of cities in Germany by population, ninth-largest city in Germany. With a population of 614,495 inhabitants, it is the largest city ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

. It is currently located in an

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first Art Deco in Paris, appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920 ...

building which was formerly the Dortmund Savings Bank. The collection includes paintings, sculptures, furniture and applied art, illustrating the cultural history of Dortmund from early times to the 20th century. There are regular temporary exhibitions of art and culture, as well as a permanent exhibition on the history of

surveying Surveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, art, and science of determining the land, terrestrial Plane (mathematics), two-dimensional or Three-dimensional space#In Euclidean geometry, three-dimensional positions of Point (geom ...

, with rare geodetic instruments.Das Museum

History

It was founded in 1883 as a collection of historical and artistic objects. It changed location several times in the early years, and came to include

archaeological Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...

finds,

decorative art ] The decorative arts are arts or crafts whose aim is the design and manufacture of objects that are both Beauty, beautiful and functional. This includes most of the objects for the interiors of buildings, as well as interior design, but typical ...

works and local historical artefacts. It was reoriented as a fine art museum in the 1930s, with the acquisition of Romanticism, Romantic paintings in particular.Museumsgeschichte
Rolf Fritz directed the museum from 1936 to 1966. The collection was evacuated during the war, and survived almost unharmed. The building, however, was destroyed, so the collection was moved into Cappenberg Castle in 1946. (The ruins of the old site were rebuilt into the Museum am Ostwall.) During this time the MKK was put in charge of artworks evacuated from various bombed

Westphalia Westphalia (; ; ) is a region of northwestern Germany and one of the three historic parts of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It has an area of and 7.9 million inhabitants. The territory of the region is almost identical with the h ...

n churches, including Conrad von Soest's ''Mary Altar'' from St. Mary's Church in Dortmund. In the 1960s and '70s the MKK acquired examples of Westphalian furniture, documenting the history of furnishing from the Gothic to

Art Nouveau Art Nouveau ( ; ; ), Jugendstil and Sezessionstil in German, is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. It was often inspired by natural forms such as the sinuous curves of plants and ...

. In 1983 it moved into its present location, an Art Deco former bank built in 1924. The director from 1982 to 1986 was Gerhard Langemeyer, the future Lord Mayor of Dortmund.

Exhibitions

The permanent exhibitions are ''Kulturgeschichte im Zeitraffer'' ("Cultural History in Time-Lapse"), ''Die kleine Nationalgalerie'' (an annexe of the Alte Nationalgalerie in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

), and the exhibition on the history of surveying. The sections are ordered chronologically, from "Back to the Stone Age" and "Antiques" through to "The New City". The permanent collection of 19th-century paintings includes works by

Caspar David Friedrich Caspar David Friedrich (; 5 September 1774 – 7 May 1840) was a German Romanticism, German Romantic Landscape painting, landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation, whose often symbolic, and anti ...

(''Winter Landscape'' and '' The Temple of Juno in Agrigento''), Max Slevogt, Lovis Corinth and

Anton von Werner Anton Alexander von Werner (9 May 18434 January 1915) was a German painter and illustrator, best known for his depictions of the Franco-Prussian War and the Unification of Germany, typical of the Naturalist style. Member of the Akademie der K ...

. Some of the previous temporary exhibitions have been devoted to

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (6 May 1880 – 15 June 1938) was a German Expressionism, expressionist Painting, painter and printmaker and one of the founders of the artists group Die Brücke or "The Bridge", a key group leading to the foundation of Expr ...

, Friedrich Karl Waechter,

Paul Cézanne Paul Cézanne ( , , ; ; ; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter whose work introduced new modes of representation, influenced avant-garde artistic movements of the early 20th century a ...

Édouard Manet Édouard Manet (, ; ; 23 January 1832 – 30 April 1883) was a French Modernism, modernist painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, as well as a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism (art movement), R ...

, and

Frank Lloyd Wright Frank Lloyd Wright Sr. (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed List of Frank Lloyd Wright works, more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key ...

and The Living City (2000). In 2008, the ''Museumsgesellschaft zur Pflege der bildenden Kunst'' (Museum Society for the Protection of Visual Art), a sponsorship society for the MKK, donated an altar painting of the Holy Kinship by Jan Baegert (active c. 1505–1530) to the museum, to mark the society's hundredth year. This work is part of an

altarpiece An altarpiece is a painting or sculpture, including relief, of religious subject matter made for placing at the back of or behind the altar of a Christian church. Though most commonly used for a single work of art such as a painting or sculpture, ...

that had been divided into four parts.Aus eins mach vier
Kulturstiftung der Länder. An exhibition from May 13 to October 14, 2018, examined the provenances of pictures acquired during the war years under the museum's director Rolf Fritz. (''Herr Fritz, woher stammen die Bilder? Ausstellung zur Provenienzforschung im MKK Dortmund'' – Dortmund) .

Notes

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Museum fur Kunst und Kulturgeschichte Museums in Dortmund Art museums and galleries in Germany Art museums and galleries established in 1883 1883 establishments in Germany