BAVARIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM

Description

Essentials about the Bavarian National Museum

Anyone interested in European art and cultural history should definitely pay a visit to the Bavarian National Museum during a trip to Munich. Covering some 13,000 square meters, the museum houses an impressive collection of artifacts spanning two millennia. The spectrum of exhibits on display is huge and ranges from paintings and sculptures to ivory and handicrafts, weapons and porcelain.

The history and architecture of the Bavarian National Museum

The museum was founded in the mid-19th century on the personal initiative of King Maximilian II. In 1851, the king had visited the first World’s Fair in London and witnessed the beginnings of the South Kensington Museum (the forerunner of the Victoria and Albert Museum).

The first museum building, which today houses the Museum Five Continents, was built from 1859 onwards in a prominent location on the forum of Maximilianstrasse and was opened in 1867. The document embedded in the foundation stone speaks of an “institution for the preservation of the most interesting patriotic monuments and other remnants of past times”. In addition to the initial focus on the history of Bavaria and the Wittelsbach royal house, separate collections of arts and crafts objects were also set up. Arranged according to material groups, the objects were intended to serve as inspiration for contemporary artists and craftsmen and to provide them with models for their own work. Soon after its opening in 1867, the Bavarian National Museum assumed a prominent position among Munich’s museums.

The collection, already considerable when the building on Maximilianstrasse was occupied, grew in the following years through extensive new acquisitions, so that space in the exhibition rooms became scarce. Between 1894 and 1900, therefore, a new building was erected on Prinzregentenstrasse according to plans by Munich architect Gabril von Seidl. Seidl’s National Museum is one of the most important and original museum buildings of its time. The building had to meet the demand to contain the most diverse works of art and styles from several centuries. Seidl succeeded in this by means of an individual design of the individual parts of the building.

Thus, the three equally protruding structures, which are connected to each other via cross-buildings, were each decorated with their own façade in the style of the German Renaissance, the Baroque and the Rococo. The museum’s exhibition rooms also vary in size, shape, and decoration. Seidl created changing dimensions and axes of passage, giving each room a new impression. The overall spatial images were arranged thematically, linking the exhibits with matching furniture and decorative arts and crafts. Their sequence resulted in a very lively and varied tour for the visitors. Despite partial redesigns and modernizations, the basic structure of Seidl’s concept has been preserved to this day and gives the museum a distinctive character.

In the 20th century, the Bavarian National Museum was enlarged and modernized several times. In 1905/06, the museum was extended to the north by several halls and a workshop wing. In 1937, another wing was added to the southeast. During World War II, the museum building was severely damaged by air raids. As early as 1947, however, the first halls were reopened to the public. Finally, in the 1990s, further extensions were built, housing the workshops of the museum craftsmen and the restoration studios as well as the Chair of Restoration, Art Technology and Conservation Science of the Technical University of Munich.

The collections of the Bavarian National Museum

The collections of the Bavarian National Museum are spread over three floors:

The first floor

The first floor is the main floor. Here paintings, wooden sculptures, bronzes, medieval ivories, tapestries, furniture, weapons and crafts from the early Middle Ages to the Enlightenment are housed. The highlight of the exhibition on the first floor is certainly the sculpture collection. Together with the collection of the National Museums in Berlin, the Bavarian National Museum has the most extensive collection of German sculptures from the Gothic and Renaissance periods. A highlight are the unique and particularly richly represented masterpieces of Southern German sculpture by Hans Multscher, Tilman Riemenschneider and Hans Leinberger.

The upper floor

The tour through cultural history continues on the eastern upper floor with style epochs from Classicism to Art Nouveau, which are impressively demonstrated by sculptures, furniture, porcelain and glass. On the western upper floor, selected specialist departments present the collections of porcelain, musical instruments and games, as well as the effectively constructed silverware of the Hildesheim prince-bishop from the 18th century. With over 200 individual pieces, the representative Hildesheim Tableware is one of the largest among German silver ensembles of the 18th century. Among the countless collections of the National Museum, the collection of medieval ivories deserves special mention. Together with those of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and the Grünes Gewölbe in Dresden, it is one of the largest and most important of its kind in the world.

The basement floor

The folkloristic holdings in the basement round off the cultural-historical tour. Here, typically furnished Bavarian farmhouse parlors with furniture from the last four centuries are on display, as well as the Hafner Tableware and the world-famous collection of nativity scenes. The latter is the most artistically valuable and extensive collection of cribs in the world. It shows the history of the development of the crib in the Alpine region and in Italy from the 18th to the 20th century.

The Bollert Collection

Another wing of the museum houses the Bollert Collection. It is the last large private collection of medieval sculptures. The main part of the sculptures comes from Southern Germany and the Alpine region and contains some masterpieces of sculptural art.