Kunstmuseum Bonn, Art museum in Gronau district, Bonn, Germany
The Kunstmuseum Bonn is a contemporary art museum on Bonn's Museum Mile, housed since 1992 in a building by Axel Schultes and Jürgen Pleuser. Its square plan is cut by diagonal axes, with a broad flat canopy roof carried on slender cylindrical concrete columns. Inside, an amphitheatre-like staircase links the foyer to the galleries, and daylight enters through large windows and skylights.
The museum's collection grew from the private collection of professor Franz Obernier (1839–1888) in the Villa Obernier. Its own history began in 1949 when Walter Holzhausen bought August Macke's Türkisches Café and Seiltänzer (both 1914). The present building by BJSS (Dietrich Bangert, Bernd Jansen, Stefan Scholz, Axel Schultes) and Jürgen Pleuser was built from 1985 and opened in 1992 at a cost of about 100 million DM.
The collection's core is the world's largest holding of August Macke, acquired from 1949 with the purchase of Türkisches Café and Seiltänzer, both painted in 1914. Around Macke sit works of the Rhenish Expressionists and a small Max Ernst group. Whole artist rooms are devoted to figures such as Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke and Katharina Grosse.
The building has three entrances, one of them at the rounded concrete sections facing the Museumsplatz. Inside, a circular amphitheatre-like staircase links the foyer with the upper collection and temporary exhibition rooms. Most rooms are lit by daylight, with large window fronts and skylights on the upper floor.
The museum is the permanent home of the Videonale, an international festival dedicated to video art that has been running since 1984. This festival makes the institution a center for experimental digital art forms and continues to shape its artistic direction today.
The community of curious travelers
AroundUs brings together thousands of curated places, local tips, and hidden gems, enriched daily by 92,814 contributors worldwide.
