Lower Saxony State Museum

The Lower Saxony State Museum (German: Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum Hannover) is a museum in Hanover, Germany. It is located opposite the New City Hall. The museum comprises the State Gallery (Landesgalerie), featuring paintings and sculptures from the Middle Ages to the 20th century, plus departments of archaeology, natural history and ethnology. The museum includes a vivarium with fish, amphibians, reptiles and arthropods.

The museum's forerunner was the Museum of Art and Science (Museum für Kunst und Wissenschaft), inaugurated in 1856 in the presence of George V of Hanover. Based in the present-day Hanover Künstlerhaus, it was later renamed the Museum of the Province of Hanover or Provincial Museum. The museum soon ran out of space for its art collections, prompting the construction of the current building, on the edge of the Maschpark, in 1902. It was designed by Hubert Stier in a Neo-Renaissance style. The building's relief frieze, titled "Key Moments in the Evolution of Humanity" (Hauptmomente in der Entwicklung der Menschheit), was created by the Hanoverian artist Georg Herting in partnership with Karl Gundelach and Georg Küsthardt.

It was renamed the State Museum in 1933, and finally the Lower Saxony State Museum of Hanover in 1950.

The cupola above the central risalit was destroyed by Allied bombs during the war. Extensive renovations and modernisations were carried out in the building's interior from 1995 to 2000. The reopening took place on 13 May as part of Expo 2000.

The State Gallery features art from the 11th to the 20th centuries. The collection includes German and Italian works from the Renaissance and the Baroque, 17th-century Flemish and Dutch paintings, Danish paintings from the 19th and 20th centuries (e.g. Constantin Hansen), and a print room featuring old German masters, Dutch drawings, 19th-century printworks, and drawings by German Impressionists. Some of the best-known artists include Rembrandt, Rubens and Albrecht Dürer.

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