Established | 9 July 1902 |
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Location | Essen, Germany |
Type | Modern Art museum |
Visitors | 800,000 in 2010 |
Director | Dr. Tobia Bezzola |
Public transit access | U11 Rüttenscheider Stern |
Website | www.museum-folkwang.de |
Museum Folkwang is a major collection of 19th- and 20th-century art in Essen, Germany. The museum was established in 1922 by merging the Essener Kunstmuseum, which was founded in 1906, and the private Folkwang Museum of the collector and patron Karl Ernst Osthaus in Hagen, founded in 1902.
The term Folkwang derives from the name of the afterlife meadow of the dead, Fólkvangr, presided over by the Norse goddess Freyja.
Museum Folkwang incorporates the Deutsche Plakat Museum (German poster museum), comprising circa 340,000 posters from politics, economy and culture. During a visit in Essen in 1932, Paul J. Sachs called the Folkwang "the most beautiful museum in the world."
In 2007, David Chipperfield designed an extension, which was then built onto the older building.
Caspar David Friedrich, Woman before the Setting Sun (Frau vor untergehender Sonne), 1818-1820
Édouard Manet, Faure as Hamlet, (Faure als Hamlet), 1877
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Lise with Umbrella, Lise mit Schirm, 1867
Vincent van Gogh, Portrait of Armand Roulin, (Porträt des Armand Roulin), 1888
Paul Gauguin:
Young girl with Fan (Junges Mädchen mit Fächer), 1902
August Macke, Hatshop, (Hutladen), 1914
Franz Marc, Horse in a Landscape (Pferd in der Landschaft), 1910
Paula Modersohn-Becker, The Painter with a Camellia Branch, Self Portrait (Die Malerin mit Kamelienzweig), 1907
The Photographic Collection was established as an independent department in the Museum Folkwang in 1978; today it contains more than 50,000 photographs and a number of artists’ estates. The Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation has been granting fellowships for contemporary German photography since 1982 in cooperation with the Photographic Collection of the Museum Folkwang.