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

Dortmund Dortmund (; Westphalian nds, Düörpm ; la, Tremonia) is the third-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia after Cologne and Düsseldorf, and the eighth-largest city of Germany, with a population of 588,250 inhabitants as of 2021. It is the la ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...

. It is currently located in an

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unit ...

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 terrestrial two-dimensional or three-dimensional positions of points and the distances and angles between them. A land surveying professional is ...

, 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 scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...

finds, decorative artworks and local historical artefacts. It was reoriented as a fine art museum in the 1930s, with the acquisition of Romantic paintings in particular.Museumsgeschichte
The collection was evacuated during the war, and survived almost unharmed. The building, however, was destroyed, so the collection was moved into

Cappenberg Castle Cappenberg Castle (german: Schloss Cappenberg) is a former Premonstratensian monastery, Cappenberg Abbey (german: Kloster Cappenberg) in Cappenberg, a part of Selm, North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. It stands on an elevation, the Cappenberg, n ...

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 (; german: Westfalen ; nds, Westfalen ) 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 regio ...

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 Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

to Art Nouveau. 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 and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitu ...

), 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 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation. He is best known for his mid-period allegorical landsca ...

(''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 known for his history paintings of notable political and military events in the Kingdom of Prussia.Fulbrook, Mary and John Breuilly (1997) ''German History Since 1800'' ...

. 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 expressionist 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 Expressionism in 20th-century ...

Friedrich Karl Waechter Friedrich Karl Waechter (3 November 1937 in Danzig – 16 September 2005 in Frankfurt) was a renowned German cartoonist, author, and playwright. Life Waechter was born in Danzig as a son of a teacher. His family fled over the Baltic Sea a ...

Paul Cézanne Paul Cézanne ( , , ; ; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically d ...

Édouard Manet Édouard Manet (, ; ; 23 January 1832 – 30 April 1883) was a French 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 to Impressionism. Bor ...

, and

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

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 The Holy Kinship was the extended family of Jesus descended from his maternal grandmother Saint Anne from her ''trinubium'' or three marriages. The group were a popular subject in religious art throughout Germany and the Low Countries, especially ...

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 an artwork such as a painting, sculpture or relief representing a religious subject 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 ...

that had been divided into four parts.Aus eins mach vier
Kulturstiftung der Länder.

Notes

External links

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