Düsseldorf School of Photography

The Kunstakademie Düsseldorf is the Arts Academy of the city of Düsseldorf, Germany. Notable artists who attended the academy include Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Ruth Rogers-Altmann, Sigmar Polke, Anselm Kiefer and photographers Thomas Ruff, Thomas Demand, Thomas Struth, Andreas Gursky and Candida Höfer. In the stairway of its main entrance, are engraved the Words: "Für unsere Studenten nur das Beste" ("For our Students only the Best").

The school was founded by Lambert Krahe in 1762 as a school of drawing. In 1773, it became the "Kurfürstlich-Pfälzische Academie der Maler, Bildhauer- und Baukunst" (Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture of the Electorate of the Palatinate). During the Napoleonic Wars, the count palatine's art collection was inherited by the Wittelsbach family and moved to Munich, prompting the Prussian government—who had annexed the Düsseldorf region after Napoleon had surrendered—to change it into a Royal Arts Academy in Düsseldorf, in 1819.

In the 1850s, the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf became internationally renowned, with many students coming from Scandinavia, Russia and the United States to learn, among other things, the genre and landscape painting associated with the "Düsseldorf school".

Students of Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Düsseldorf School of Photography have included Laurenz Berges, Elger Esser, Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, Simone Nieweg, Thomas Ruff, Jörg Sasse, Thomas Struth, Petra Wunderlich. The academy has its own museum: the academy gallery (near to the historic city hall). The new director, Rita McBride, will open the academy to new media such as 3D printing. Every February the academy opens to the public, an event which is called Rundgang (tour).

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