The art collections of Museum Wiesbaden span from the 12th century to the present. Scroll down to get an impression of our four focal points: Old Masters, Jugendstil, Classical Modernism, Modern and Contemporary.
The Old Masters collection encompasses works from the 12th to the 18th centuries, including religious and Italian art, as well as paintings from the Golden Age of 17th-century Dutch painting. The works of the collection are arranged thematically in separate rooms, allowing visitors to observe the development and echoes of a particular genre over time and including contemporary works to enrich this experience.
The south wing of Museum Wiesbaden is home to the Jugendstil collection of Ferdinand Wolfgang Neess, now a part of our permanent exhibition. The over 500 objects form a cross-section of all genres of Jugendstil, providing an exemplary display of the quality and stylistic heights of this movement in late 19th-century art.
The museum’s Classical Modernism collection holds international significance, above all, for its assemblage of over 100 works by Russian Expressionist Alexej von Jawlensky (1864—1941), who spent the last twenty years of his life in Wiesbaden.
Art of the European and American Modern period after 1945 forms one of the most prominent collections of the museum. The collection focuses on abstract painting and sculpture concerned with the themes of line, color, surface, volume, and space.
Two art prizes are associated with Museum Wiesbaden. The first is the Alexej von Jawlensky Prize of the state capital Wiesbaden, which commemorates the life's work of the great Russian painter, who lived in Wiesbaden from 1921 until his death in 1941. It is awarded every 5 years with the financial support of the Hessian state capital, Spielbank Wiesbaden, and the Nassauische Sparkasse, among others.
The second is the Otto Ritschl Prize. The artist lived in Wiesbaden from 1918 until 1976. After his early figural and, later, more Surrealist works, Ritschl began, in the 1950s, to move progressively toward geometric and, finally, more expressive abstraction. The increasingly meditative work of his late period, beginning in the early 1960s, focused on immaterial space, shaped entirely through color. The Museum Association Otto Ritschl began bestowing the prize in 2001 in Ritschl’s honor to keep the artist’s name alive.
Museum Wiesbaden offers a variety of programs for all ages, from guided tours to workshops for preschools and schools, to teacher training and programs for students, private groups, or families with children.
