One house – four museums. The Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich opened under this motto in 2002. Under one roof, it combines the four different collections of art, design, graphics and architecture on an exhibition area of around 13,000 square meters. In the field of fine arts and design of the 20th and 21st centuries, it is considered one of the largest museums. The construction in Maxvorstadt was not without controversy. Only after the foundation of the Pinakothek der Moderne had collected several million euros from private donors as start-up financing did the Free State decide to build the museum based on a design by Stephan Braunfels.
However, the cost pressure led to construction defects early on. And ten years after opening, the house had to be closed due to the renovation of the central rotunda. Today, the Pinakothek der Moderne sees itself not only as a museum that keeps collections and presents works of art, but also as a participatory, inclusive and diverse mediation site for all social classes with more than 2000 events of all kinds and a new digital strategy. The house is now celebrating this with free entry with an anniversary week.
Modern Art Collection
August Macke’s painting “Girl under Trees” from 1914 can be seen in the Modern Art Collection in the Pinakothek der Moderne.
(Photo: Bavarian State Painting Collections)
Powerful colours, grand gestures, narrative structures, but also background stories – all of this can be found in the paintings, sculptures, photographs, videos and installations in the Modern Art Collection of the Bavarian State Painting Collections. The collection is famous for its “Big B’s”: Beckmann, Beuys, Baselitz and Bacon. With more than 20,000 exhibits, it occupies the entire first floor of the Pinakothek der Moderne. It picks up where the collection presentation of the Neue Pinakothek ends, namely with art after around 1900.
The spectrum of the collection thus ranges from the most important avant-garde movements of the early 20th century to the immediate present. Here you will find major works of classical modernism such as those by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Max Beckmann, August Macke, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst and René Magritte. But also extensive work complexes such as those by Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys, Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, Fred Sandback, John Chamberlain, Georg Baselitz, Blinky Palermo, Sigmar Polke, Jeff Wall, Rosemarie Trockel, Anselm Kiefer and Gerhard Richter are represented as art found here after 1960. Current artistic positions, photography as well as media art, performance and spatial installations are constantly growing. In the forthcoming exhibition “Mix & Match” the collection will be shown in new contexts.
The New Collection – The Design Museum
The famous type case from the Neue Sammlung in the Pinakothek der Moderne.
(Photo: Rainer Viertlböck)
As soon as you enter the Pinakothek der Moderne, an outstanding object from the design collection greets visitors: the egg-shaped Futuro house from the Neue Sammlung. If you enter the museum and turn right, you will see the oversized type case on the bottom right, which is the eye-catcher of the design collection. This has around 120,000 objects, which are also shown in a paternoster or in the recently opened X-Depot. The Danner rotunda in the basement is all about furniture design and contemporary jewellery.
The New Collection represents the history and development of design and applied art from around 1900 to the present. It is considered to be the oldest design collection, with predecessors going back to 1912. It is also the world’s largest collection of industrial design. Important focal points are vehicle design, computer culture, everyday objects such as ceramics, glass, metal, textiles and furniture, including the extensive collection of Thonet chairs. Graphic design can also be seen here, from posters to packaging design to book design.
State Graphic Collection
El Greco’s variation on Michelangelo’s “Giorno”, around 1570 from the Graphic Collection.
(Photo: State Graphic Collection Munich)
The statistics alone are impressive: 420,000 sheets, including 45,000 drawings and around 375,000 sheets of prints. The Munich State Graphic Collection is the most important museum for drawings and prints in Germany, alongside the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin and Dresden, and is one of the largest institutions of its kind in the world. The holdings in the collection are constantly growing and include all eras of graphics from the 12th to the 21st century. The focus is on old German and Dutch drawings and prints, Italian drawings from the Renaissance and German drawings from the 19th century. But classic modernism and international graphics up to the present are also represented. The collection goes back to the copper engraving and drawing cabinet founded in 1758 by Elector Karl Theodor von der Pfalz in Mannheim Palace, which came to Munich in the 1790s.
An independent museum institution since 1874, the cabinet has been housed in the House of Cultural Institutes on Königsplatz since 1948. This is where the depots and the study room, which is open to the public, are located. The exhibitions can be seen in the Pinakothek der Moderne. Actually, the graphic collection should have its own house on the so-called “second construction phase” of the Pinakothek der Moderne along Gabelsbergerstrasse and Türkenstrasse. But then the Free State decided to build the Brandhorst Museum. Since then, the Graphic Collection has been waiting for its own home. In 2019, the Pinakothek der Moderne Foundation acquired the rights to the second construction phase from the architect Braunfels. For the first time in two decades, progress could now be made in this matter.
Architecture Museum of the Technical University of Munich
The model of the Olympic roof by Behnisch & Partner from the collection of the Architekturmuseum.
(Photo: TUM Architecture Museum)
The Architecture Museum was founded in 1868 as the architectural teaching collection of the Technical University and later converted into an archive and research facility. After the Second World War, the stocks were stored in depots for many years. In 1975 the collection was converted into an archive with a museum function. Since no own exhibition rooms were available, the exhibitions went to other museums such as the Stadtmuseum, and from 2002 to the Pinakothek der Moderne. Today, the Architecture Museum looks after one of the largest special collections for architecture in Germany. The holdings include around 600,000 drawings and plans by more than 1,000 architects, 255,000 original photographs, 1,800 architectural models as well as numerous architectural engravings, building files and, increasingly, digital databases.
The oldest preserved drawings come from the 16th century, the oldest model dates from the 17th century. Highlights include works by Balthasar Neumann, Friedrich von Gärtner, Leo von Klenze, Theodor Fischer, Erich Mendelsohn, Erik Gunnar Asplund, Le Corbusier, Günter Behnisch, Daniel Libeskind and Peter Zumthor. The focus of the collection is on German architecture of the 19th and 20th centuries, but new projects and competition entries, drawings, models and construction documents are also collected. The temporary exhibitions of the Architekturmuseum in the Pinakothek der Moderne can be found in the left wing of the ground floor, seen from the main entrance.
Twenty – So What?, anniversary week for 20 years Pinakothek der Moderne, until 18 Sep. free admission, program below pinakothek-der-moderne.de