The Kunstpalast, formerly Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf is an art museum in

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in the state after Cologne and the List of cities in Germany with more than 100,000 inhabitants, seventh-largest city ...

History

The roots of the museum go back around 300 years. In 1932, the collection of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (Academy of Art) was housed in the Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf. This included the exhibits given by the popular regent Jan Wellem, Duke of Palatinate, and his wife

Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici (11 August 1667 – 18 February 1743) was an Italian noblewoman who was the last lineal descendant of the main branch of the House of Medici. A patron of the arts, she bequeathed the Medicis' large art collection, in ...

, and some rich citizens of Düsseldorf. The academy had been founded in 1710, its collection expanded in the 19th century by the collection of Lambert Krahe. The Düsseldorfer Gallerieverein, founded in the 19th century, collected many drawings of the Düsseldorfer Malerschule, later given to that collection. The Museum for Advanced Arts, whose opening was in 1883, merged with that museum later. The Kunstmuseum in its actual form opened in 1913. Subsequently, the Museumsverein (the Museum Association) and the Künstler-Verein zur Veranstaltung von Kunstausstellungen (the Artists’ Association for the Realisation of Art Exhibitions) collaborated in the organisation of art exhibitions, and the foundation Stiftung Museum Kunstpalast was established in 1998. In January 2020, the NRW Forum became part of the Kunstpalast.

Architecture

In 1902, the first Kunstpalast was erected at Ehrenhof ("court of honour"), for a major exhibition featuring artworks as well as industrial and trade items. A new building in

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 ...

style was designed by

Wilhelm Kreis Wilhelm Kreis (17 March 1873 – 13 August 1955) was a prominent German architect and professor of architecture, active through four political systems in German history: the Wilhelmine era, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and the found ...

in 1926, for an exhibition on health care, social care and exercise, called " GeSoLei". The Communal Arts Collection and the for

ceramics A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant, and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porce ...

(

applied arts The applied arts are all the arts that apply design and decoration to everyday and essentially practical objects in order to make them aesthetically pleasing."Applied art" in ''The Oxford Dictionary of Art''. Online edition. Oxford Univ ...

moved into the Ehrenhof building in 1928. In 1969 the ceramics moved to the at the Schulstraße in

Düsseldorf-Carlstadt Carlstadt is a quarter of Düsseldorf and belongs to the central Borough 1 (Düsseldorf), Borough 1. It lies south of the Old Town (Düsseldorf-Altstadt, Altstadt) and was named after the Charles Theodore, Elector of Bavaria, Duke Carl-Theodor, ...

. There is also the '' NRW-Forum Kultur und Wirtschaft'' (forum for culture and economy of North Rhine-Westphalia) in the same building complex. The museum was extensively remodelled by

Oswald Mathias Ungers Oswald Mathias Ungers (12 July 1926 – 30 September 2007) was a German architect and architectural theorist, known for his rationalist designs and the use of cubic forms. Among his notable projects are museums in Frankfurt, Hamburg and Cologn ...

and reopened in 2001.

Collection

The Museum Kunstpalast includes objects of fine arts from

Classical antiquity Classical antiquity, also known as the classical era, classical period, classical age, or simply antiquity, is the period of cultural History of Europe, European history between the 8th century BC and the 5th century AD comprising the inter ...

to the present, including

drawing Drawing is a Visual arts, visual art that uses an instrument to mark paper or another two-dimensional surface, or a digital representation of such. Traditionally, the instruments used to make a drawing include pencils, crayons, and ink pens, some ...

sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

s, a collection of more than 70,000

graphic Graphics () are visual images or designs on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, screen, paper, or stone, to inform, illustrate, or entertain. In contemporary usage, it includes a pictorial representation of the data, as in design and manufa ...

exhibits and

photographs A photograph (also known as a photo, or more generically referred to as an ''image'' or ''picture'') is an image created by light falling on a photosensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic image sensor. The process and pra ...

, applied arts and

design A design is the concept or proposal for an object, process, or system. The word ''design'' refers to something that is or has been intentionally created by a thinking agent, and is sometimes used to refer to the inherent nature of something ...

and one of Europe's largest glass collections, the Helmut Hentrich Glass Museum./ The graphic collection includes 14,000

Italian baroque Italian Baroque (or ''Barocco'') is a stylistic period in Italian history and art that spanned from the late 16th century to the early 18th century. History The early 17th century marked a time of change for those of the Roman Catholic religion ...

graphics. The collection presents several works from

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

Persia Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

, beginning with the 3rd century BC. The art collection also include works from periods such as Gothic,

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...

Baroque The Baroque ( , , ) is a Western Style (visual arts), style of Baroque architecture, architecture, Baroque music, music, Baroque dance, dance, Baroque painting, painting, Baroque sculpture, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished from ...

, the time of

Goethe Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German polymath who is widely regarded as the most influential writer in the German language. His work has had a wide-ranging influence on Western literature, literary, Polit ...

, the 19th century, the 20th century including a large collection of

ZERO 0 (zero) is a number representing an empty quantity. Adding (or subtracting) 0 to any number leaves that number unchanged; in mathematical terminology, 0 is the additive identity of the integers, rational numbers, real numbers, and compl ...

works, and the present.

Restitution of Franz Marc's The Foxes

In 2017, the family of the German Jewish art collector Kurt Grawi requested the restitution of Franz Marc's painting The Foxes (1913) ("Die Füchse") which had been acquired by Grawi in 1928. When the Nazis rose to power in 1933, they persecuted Grawi because he was Jewish, "Aryanizing" his business in 1935 and imprisoning him in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1938. Grawi fled Germany for Chile in 1939, selling the painting to fund his escape. In 2021, the German Advisory Commission recommended that the city of Düsseldorf restitute the painting to Grawi's heirs and the Düsseldorf City Council voted to restitute the painting. In January 2022 Düsseldorf restituted Marc's The Foxes ("Die Füchse" ) to the Grawi heirs.

Gallery

File:Museum Kunstpalast - Eingang Westflügel (8235-37).jpg, Entrance Western wing File:Interiors at Museum KunstPalast Düsseldorf-1.jpg File:Interiors at Museum KunstPalast Düsseldorf-5.jpg, ''The Assumption of the Virgin Mary'' by

Peter Paul Rubens Sir Peter Paul Rubens ( ; ; 28 June 1577 – 30 May 1640) was a Flemish painting, Flemish artist and diplomat. He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque painting, Flemish Baroque tradition. Rubens' highly charged comp ...

Affiliated Institutes

*The Archive for artistical photography of the rhenanian artscene (AFORK) is part of the Modern Department and has an extension collection of prints and will be part of a future Research Center for the Arts at the museum. *The

ZERO foundation Zero (usually styled as ZERO) was an artist group founded in the late 1950s in Düsseldorf by Heinz Mack and Otto Piene. Piene described it as "a zone of silence and of pure possibilities for a new beginning".Karen Rosenberg (August 21, 2014)Ha ...

, founded by the Museum Kunst Palast together with the three ZERO artists Heinz Mack,

Günther Uecker Günther Uecker (; 13 March 1930 – 10 June 2025) was a German painter, sculptor, op artist, and installation artist. He became known primarily for his nail reliefs. In 1961, Uecker joined the Zero (art), ZERO group. Early life and education ...

und Otto Piene, has temporary offices, with an extensive archive, in the New Harbour, and will be part of a future Research Center for the Arts at the museum.

Exhibitions

Among several exhibitions of archival material, the Museum Kunstpalast has already hosted some exhibitions on Old Masters as well, including: *An exhibition of paintings by

Caravaggio Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (also Michele Angelo Merigi or Amerighi da Caravaggio; 29 September 1571 – 18 July 1610), known mononymously as Caravaggio, was an Italian painter active in Rome for most of his artistic life. During the fina ...

(from 2006 to 2007) *The biggest exhibition of

El Greco Doménikos Theotokópoulos (, ; 1 October 1541 7 April 1614), most widely known as El Greco (; "The Greek"), was a Greek painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance, regarded as one of the greatest artists of all time. ...

paintings in Germany since several decades. The exhibition showed their influence on Modern Art. It took place in 2012 *An exhibition of paintings by Spanish baroque painter Francisco de Zurbarán (from 2015 to 2016)

References

* ''museum kunst palast, Düsseldorf'' with articles written by

Bettina Baumgärtel Bettina Baumgärtel (born 1957) is a German art historian who is head of the painting collection of the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf. She is a leading authority on the art of Angelica Kauffman and founded the Angelika Kauffmann Research Proje ...

, Sonja Brink, Christoph Danelzik-Brüggemann, Jean-Hubert Martin, Helmut Ricke, Dieter Scholz, Barbara Til, Stephan von Wiese. Book series of the Fondation BNP Paribas. Paris 2003 (in German, English and French) * Bogomir Ecker, Thomas Huber: ''Künstlermuseum''.

External links

Official website English

Digital Collection official website English

ZERO foundation website

Virtual tour of the Museum Kunstpalast
provided by

Google Arts & Culture Google Arts & Culture (formerly Google Art Project) is an online platform of high-resolution images and videos of artworks and cultural artifacts from partner cultural organizations throughout the world, operated by Google. It utilizes high-re ...

* {{Authority control Art museums and galleries established in 1913 Art museums and galleries in Germany Museums in Düsseldorf 1913 establishments in Germany Convention centres in Germany