Kunstmuseum Gelsenkirchen

Description

In the Buer district of Gelsenkirchen, the Kunstmuseum Gelsenkirchen presents the municipal collection with a focus on art of the first half of the 20th century and a significant department of kinetic art.

The museum traces its origins to a municipal house whose holdings were reorganized after wartime destruction in the Second World War. It was reestablished in 1950; from 1957 the collection was shown in its entirety for the first time in a Gründerzeit villa. Financial constraints in the 1960s led to a halt in extensive acquisitions, before collecting activity was gradually resumed in the 1970s. On the initiative of citizens and with state funding, the present museum building was created in the 1980s, the first phase of which opened in 1984; the building is architecturally connected to the old villa, which continues to be used for temporary exhibitions. The name “Kunstmuseum Gelsenkirchen” was adopted in 2008 by a decision of the cultural committee.

The holdings concentrate on painting and graphic art of early modernism, including movements such as Impressionism, Fauvism, Expressionism and Suprematism; the collection also presents art after 1945 up to and including Pop Art. Sculptural works are present both inside the building and in its exterior spaces.

Particular emphasis is placed on kinetic art, which addresses movement, light and sound; the relevant department was comprehensively revised in 2016 and is among the noteworthy collections of its kind in Europe. Also part of the permanent exhibition are extensive bodies of work by the communication designer Anton Stankowski, who was born in Gelsenkirchen.

A painting by Lovis Corinth, created in 1896 and acquired for the municipal collection in 1957, became the subject of a restitution procedure after 2010 due to questions of ownership related to Nazi persecution; an advisory commission recommended in 2016 that it be handed over to the heirs, a recommendation the city followed. An art theft carried out in August 2008, in which three prints were stolen, also prompted a public debate about the museum’s budget, insurance coverage and organizational structure.