Museum Neues Weimar

As one of the first German museum buildings, the Neues Museum Weimar can look back on a long history: the building was erected from 1863 to 1868 as a Grand Ducal Museum and after the completion of the interior, together with that of Friedrich Preller the Elder, Ä. created "Preller Gallery" opened in June 1869. The building was created on the initiative of Carl Alexander von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach and originally served to present the grand ducal art collections. After the abdication of the Weimar ducal family, it was reopened in 1919 as the Thuringian State Museum and presented the controversial avant-garde of the 1920s.

After 1933, the Neo-Renaissance building was used by the National Socialists as an official building and museum. During the Second World War the building was damaged by firebombs and in the decades that followed it was increasingly left to decay. Only an extensive restoration and new equipment in the 1990s made it possible to reopen as a new museum at the start of the European City of Culture year 1999. Internationally recognized temporary exhibitions on various topics were held here until 2017. In 2019, the Museum Neues Weimar will open with a permanent exhibition on art before the Bauhaus period entitled "Van de Velde, Nietzsche and Modernism around 1900" and thus offers an ideal complement to the Bauhaus Museum Weimar. Both museums have been part of the "Quartier Weimarer Moderne" since 2019.

The exhibition shows outstanding international works of Realism, Impressionism and Art Nouveau. They reflect a glamorous as well as contradictory epoch with references to our present. Starting with Friedrich Nietzsche as a pioneer and cult figure, important positions in early modernism in Weimar are presented. These include the works of the Weimar school of painting and the avant-garde, from Claude Monet to Max Beckmann, who were supported by Harry Graf Kessler. The functional and elegant design of Henry van de Velde is presented with numerous exhibits. The installation "The Room" by Pipilotti Rist as a contemporary intervention in the southern gallery questions one's own bodily perceptions.

Based on the themes of the exhibition, a large museum workshop invites visitors to work with their hands. Visitors can visit the workshop without an appointment and work in bookbinding and woodworking, for example. [KSW]