The Museum Kunst der Westküste (Museum of West Coast Art) is a

non-profit foundation A foundation (also referred to as a charitable foundation) is a type of nonprofit organization or charitable trust that usually provides funding and support to other charitable organizations through grants, while also potentially participating d ...

, located in Alkersum on the north Frisian island,

Föhr Föhr (; ''Fering'' North Frisian: ''Feer''; ) is one of the North Frisian Islands on the German coast of the North Sea. It is part of the Nordfriesland district in the federal state of Schleswig-Holstein. Föhr is the second-largest North Sea ...

. The museum collects, researches, communicates and exhibits art that deals with the themes of sea and coast. The museum began with a collection of paintings donated by the museum's founder, Frederik Paulsen, chairman of

Ferring Pharmaceuticals Ferring Pharmaceuticals is a Swiss multinational biopharmaceutical company specialising in areas such as reproductive health, maternal health, gastroenterology and urology. Ferring has been developing treatments for mothers and babies for over 50 ...

Collection

The Sammlung Kunst der Westküste (Collection of West Coast Art) comprises Danish,

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

Dutch Dutch or Nederlands commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands ** Dutch people as an ethnic group () ** Dutch nationality law, history and regulations of Dutch citizenship () ** Dutch language () * In specific terms, i ...

and Norwegian art. Executed between 1830 and 1930, the works document life along the continental

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Denmark, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. A sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian Se ...

coast.

Scandinavia Scandinavia is a subregion#Europe, subregion of northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. ''Scandinavia'' most commonly refers to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. It can sometimes also ...

n and German artists of the 19th and 20th centuries are represented, including

Anna Ancher Anna Ancher (18 August 1859 – 15 April 1935) was a Danish artist associated with the Skagen Painters, an artist colony on the northern point of Jylland, Denmark. She is considered to be one of Denmark's greatest visual artists. Background An ...

Michael Ancher Michael Peter Ancher (9 June 1849 – 19 September 1927) was a Danish Realism (art movement), realist artist, widely known for his paintings of fishermen, the Skagerak and the North Sea, and other scenes from the Danish fishing community in Skag ...

Max Beckmann Max Carl Friedrich Beckmann (February 12, 1884 – December 27, 1950) was a German painter, drawing, draftsman, printmaker, sculpture, sculptor, and writer. Although he is classified as an Expressionist artist, he rejected both the term and the m ...

Johan Christian Dahl Johan Christian Claussen Dahl (24 February 178814 October 1857), often known as or , was a Danish- Norwegian artist who is considered the first great romantic painter in Norway, the founder of the "golden age" of Norwegian painting. He is often ...

Peder Severin Krøyer Peder Severin Krøyer (; 23 July 1851 – 21 November 1909), also known as P. S. Krøyer, was a Danish painter. Life Growing up and early training Krøyer was born in Stavanger, Norway, on 23 July 1851 to a single mother, Ellen Cecilie Gjes ...

Christian Krohg Christian Krohg (13 August 1852 – 16 October 1925) was a Norwegian naturalist painter, illustrator, author and journalist. Krohg was inspired by the realism art movement and often chose motifs from everyday life. He was the director and s ...

Max Liebermann Max Liebermann (20 July 1847 – 8 February 1935) was a German painter and printmaker, and one of the leading proponents of Impressionism in Germany and continental Europe. In addition to his activity as an artist, he also assembled an important ...

Emil Nolde Emil Nolde (born Hans Emil Hansen; 7 August 1867 – 13 April 1956) was a German painter and printmaker. He was one of the first Expressionists, a member of Die Brücke, and was one of the first oil painting and watercolor painters of the early ...

and

Edvard Munch Edvard Munch ( ; ; 12 December 1863 – 23 January 1944) was a Norwegian painter. His 1893 work ''The Scream'' has become one of Western art's most acclaimed images. His childhood was overshadowed by illness, bereavement and the dread of inher ...

. The collection contains works by Dutch painters such as the Romantic artist, Andreas Schelfhout, and members of The

Hague School The Hague School () is a group of artists who lived and worked in The Hague between 1860 and 1890. Their work was heavily influenced by the realist painters of the French Barbizon school. The painters of the Hague school generally made use of re ...

Jozef Israëls Jozef Israëls (; 27 January 1824 – 12 August 1911) was a Dutch Painting, painter. He was a leading member of the group of landscape painters referred to as the Hague School and was, during his lifetime, "the most respected Dutch artist of th ...

and

Hendrik Willem Mesdag Hendrik Willem Mesdag (; 23 February 183110 July 1915) was a Dutch marine painter. Biography He was born in Groningen, the son of the banker Klaas Mesdag and his wife Johanna Wilhelmina van Giffen. Mesdag was encouraged by his father, an a ...

Johan Barthold Jongkind Johan Barthold Jongkind (; 3 June 1819 – 9 February 1891) was a Dutch painter and printmaker. He painted marine landscapes in a free manner and is regarded as a forerunner of impressionism. Biography Jongkind was born in the town of Lat ...

and

Eugène Boudin Eugène Louis Boudin (; 12 July 1824 – 8 August 1898) was one of the first French landscape painters to paint outdoors. Boudin was a marine painter, and expert in the rendering of all that goes upon the sea and along its shores. His pastels, ...

, who are regarded as precursors of

Impressionism Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...

and important to the development of European

landscape painting Landscape painting, also known as landscape art, is the depiction in painting of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, rivers, trees, and forests, especially where the main subject is a wide view—with its elements arranged into a cohe ...

in the 19th century, are also represented. Finally, a main focus of the collection is North Frisian painting, represented by the works of :de:Otto Heinrich Engel and Hans Peter Feddersen.

Architecture

The Museum was designed by Sunder-Plassmann Architekten as a multipart museum complex, combining tradition and

Modernism Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

. The museum contains six galleries with a total exhibition space of over . The museum's architecture addresses local building and landscape history in by integrating existing buildings like historical barns, and highlighting the differences between the sandy coastal heathlands and the lower marshland. The complex, built between 2006 and 2009, also includes a museum garden and “Grethjens Gasthof“, built in the style of a Scandinavian

manor house A manor house was historically the main residence of the lord of the manor. The house formed the administrative centre of a manor in the European feudal system; within its great hall were usually held the lord's manorial courts, communal mea ...

from around 1900. Carrying on its traditional function as a meeting place for artists working on

and as a site where natives and guests congregate, this building now houses the museum restaurant Grethjens Gasthof.

Awards

In 2011 the museum was nominated for the

European Museum of the Year Award The European Museum of the Year Award (EMYA) is presented each year by the European Museum Forum (European Museum Forum, EMF) under the auspices of the Council of Europe. The EMYA is considered the most important annual award in the European mus ...

. The same year Sunder-Plassmann Architekten were awarded the Architekturpreis Schleswig-Holstein and the museum received the

Red Dot Design Award The Red Dot Design Award is an international, annual design competition for product and industrial design, brand and communication design as well as design concepts, in which the Red Dot quality label is awarded to winners. The Red Dot Design A ...

for its corporate design.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Museum Kunst der Westkuste Kunst der Westkuste Art museums and galleries in Germany Marine art museums Art museums and galleries established in 2009 2009 establishments in Germany