Museum Angewandte Kunst

Museum Angewandte Kunst Museum Angewandte Kunst is an applied arts museum in Frankfurt am Main focusing on design, crafts, and visual culture, situated within a network of European cultural institutions including the Städel Museum, Liebieghaus, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Museum für Moderne Kunst, and Senckenberg Museum. The institution engages with international partners such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, Cooper Hewitt, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin, and Design Museum to present thematic surveys and historical retrospectives.

History

The museum's origin reflects postwar cultural rebuilding in Hessen and the municipal cultural policy of Frankfurt am Main, emerging alongside initiatives like the Internationale Bauausstellung and collaborations with the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and Kulturstiftung des Bundes. Early directors negotiated collections transfers with institutions such as the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Bauhaus-Archiv, and Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, while curators organized loans from private archives including estates of Philipp Jakob Spener collectors and the archives of designers tied to Peter Behrens, Wiener Werkstätte, and Arts and Crafts movement. Exhibition histories reference exchanges with the Royal College of Art, École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, Domus Academy, and collaborations with houses like Hermès, Knoll, and Vitra.

Architecture and Building

Housed in a building that participates in Frankfurt's architectural dialogue alongside works by Helmut Jahn, GMP Architekten, Foster + Partners, and Arquitectonica, the museum's premises interface with urban projects like the Alte Oper, Zeil, and the Mainufer. The structure reflects influences traced in scholarship comparing it to the Glasgow School of Art, Horta designs, and Werkbund architecture, and architects involved studied precedents including Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Alvar Aalto, Sverre Fehn, and Richard Rogers. Conservation plans have been informed by case studies at Palazzo Grassi, Fondazione Prada, Tate Modern, Louvre, and Centre Pompidou.

Collections and Exhibitions

The permanent holdings encompass ceramics, textiles, furniture, and graphic design with parallels to collections at Metropolitan Museum of Art, British Museum, Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague, Rijksmuseum, and Hermitage Museum, and feature works by designers and makers associated with Wiener Werkstätte, Bauhaus, Danish Modern, Italian Radical Design, and Japanese Mingei traditions. Notable objects are contextualized alongside masters such as William Morris, Gustav Stickley, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Wiener Werkstätte artists, Charlotte Perriand, Le Corbusier, Eileen Gray, Marcel Breuer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Achille Castiglioni, Isamu Noguchi, Arne Jacobsen, Raymond Loewy, Dieter Rams, Philippe Starck, Ettore Sottsass, Michael Thonet, Hans Wegner, Alvar Aalto, Verner Panton, Jean Prouvé, Jasper Morrison, Naoto Fukasawa, Zaha Hadid, and Frank Gehry. Temporary exhibitions have included loans from Museo Nazionale del Prado, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, MoMA, Centre Georges Pompidou, Kunstmuseum Basel, Pinakothek der Moderne, Nationalmuseum Stockholm, National Gallery of Victoria, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Smithsonian Institution, National Gallery, London, Royal Ontario Museum, Neue Galerie New York, Walker Art Center, Hammer Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Asian Civilisations Museum, Shanghai Museum, Tokyo National Museum, Kunstgewerbeverein Leipzig, and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.

Education and Public Programs

Educational initiatives link the museum with universities and schools such as Goethe University Frankfurt, Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach am Main, Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences, University of the Arts Helsinki, Royal College of Art, Politecnico di Milano, and Pratt Institute. Public programs include lectures and workshops featuring practitioners and scholars connected to Etnografiska museet, Designmuseum Danmark, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Cooper Union, Bauhaus Archive, Aalto University, IED Milano, Parsons School of Design, Columbia University, Yale School of Architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Sotheby's, Christie's, ICOM, and ICOMOS.

Research and Conservation

Research activities coordinate with conservation laboratories and research centers such as the Rijksmuseum Conservation Department, Tate Conservation, Getty Conservation Institute, Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum, Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt, Fraunhofer Society, Max Planck Society, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron, European Research Council, and archives including Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Bundesarchiv, Archiv der Avantgarden, and Stadtmuseum München. Conservation projects have addressed materials and techniques documented in collaborations with Victoria and Albert Museum Conservation Department, National Gallery Conservation Department, Smithsonian Conservation Institute, Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, ICCROM, and UNESCO World Heritage Centre.

Category:Museums in Frankfurt