Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte
Encyclopedia
Dortmund
Dortmund is a city in Germany. It is located in the Bundesland of North Rhine-Westphalia, in the Ruhr area. Its population of 585,045 makes it the 7th largest city in Germany and the 34th largest in the European Union....
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. It is currently located in an Art Deco
Art Deco
Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...
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
See Also: Public Land Survey SystemSurveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, and science of accurately determining the terrestrial or three-dimensional position of points and the distances and angles between them...
, with rare geodetic instruments.
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 archaeologicalArchaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...
finds, decorative art
Decorative art
The decorative arts is traditionally a term for the design and manufacture of functional objects. It includes interior design, but not usually architecture. The decorative arts are often categorized in opposition to the "fine arts", namely, painting, drawing, photography, and large-scale...
works and local historical artefacts. It was reoriented as a fine art museum in the 1930s, with the acquisition of Romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
paintings in particular.
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
Cappenberg Castle is a former Premonstratensian monastery, Cappenberg Abbey in Cappenberg, a part of Selm, North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany...
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
Westphalia is a region in Germany, centred on the cities of Arnsberg, Bielefeld, Dortmund, Minden and Münster.Westphalia is roughly the region between the rivers Rhine and Weser, located north and south of the Ruhr River. No exact definition of borders can be given, because the name "Westphalia"...
n churches, including Conrad von Soest
Conrad von Soest
Conrad von Soest, also Konrad in modern texts, or in Middle High German Conrad van Sost or "von Soyst", Conrad von Soest, also Konrad in modern texts, or in Middle High German Conrad van Sost or "von Soyst", Conrad von Soest, also Konrad in modern texts, or in Middle High German Conrad van Sost...
'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 art
Gothic art was a Medieval art movement that developed in France out of Romanesque art in the mid-12th century, led by the concurrent development of Gothic architecture. It spread to all of Western Europe, but took over art more completely north of the Alps, never quite effacing more classical...
to Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art"...
. 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 NationalgalerieAlte Nationalgalerie
The Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin is a gallery showing a collection of Classical, Romantic, Biedermeier, Impressionist and early Modernist artwork, all of which belong to the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. The museum is situated on Museum Island, a UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site.- Founding...
in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
), 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
Caspar David Friedrich 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 landscapes which typically feature contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies, morning...
, Max Slevogt
Max Slevogt
Max Slevogt was a German Impressionist painter and illustrator, best known for his landscapes. He was, together with Lovis Corinth and Max Liebermann, one of the foremost representatives in Germany of the plein air style.-Biography:He was born in Landshut, Germany...
, Lovis Corinth
Lovis Corinth
Lovis Corinth was a German painter and printmaker whose mature work realized a synthesis of impressionism and expressionism....
and Anton von Werner. Some of the previous temporary exhibitions have been devoted to Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner 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 art. He volunteered for army service in the First World War, but soon suffered a...
, Friedrich Karl Waechter, Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne 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 different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th...
, Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet was a French painter. One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism....
and Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures and completed 500 works. Wright believed in designing structures which were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture...
.
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
Holy Kinship
Holy Kinship was a popular theme in religious art throughout Germany and the Low Countries, especially during the late 15th and early 16th centuries. The Holy Kin were the extended family of Jesus descended from his maternal grandmother St. Anne. According to this tradition, St...
by Jan Baegert (active c. 1505–1530) to the museum, to mark the society's hundredth year. This work is part of an altarpiece
Altarpiece
An altarpiece is a picture or relief representing a religious subject and suspended in a frame behind the altar of a church. The altarpiece is often made up of two or more separate panels created using a technique known as panel painting. It is then called a diptych, triptych or polyptych for two,...
that had been divided into four parts.