Museum Wiesbaden is celebrating its 200th anniversary with exceptional news and a spectacular exhibition that showcases the vital role of private patronage in building museum collections. The institution has received a remarkable donation from an anonymous local collector who has promised his high-quality art collection to the museum through his will and is now making this commitment public.
Museum Director Andreas Henning expressed his deep gratitude and happiness regarding the generous donation from the patron who prefers to remain anonymous. "It is a collection that strengthens our strengths and fills our gaps," Henning said. The collection comprises approximately 100 works with a focus on artists from the New Artists' Association Munich, the Blue Rider group, the Bridge artist group, and the New Objectivity movement.
The impressive collection features major names such as Erich Heckel, Alexej von Jawlensky, Ida Kerkovius, and Max Pechstein. It also introduces visitors to rarely exhibited female artists including Erma Bossi, Elisabeth Epstein, and Ilona Singer. The donation includes sculptures by Ernst Barlach, Marg Moll, and Louise Stomps, creating numerous connections to other works already in the Museum Wiesbaden's collection, which have also primarily come through donations.
"Civic engagement has accompanied us for 200 years," Henning emphasized, noting that Museum Wiesbaden has become one of Germany's leading museums for Expressionism almost exclusively due to such private support. "We have no designated acquisition budget," he explained. Among the 105 artworks currently on display in the exhibition, only ten were actually purchased by the museum itself.
The major autumn exhibition titled "Feininger, Münter, Modersohn-Becker" serves as a comprehensive showcase of the museum's Classical Modernism collection and tells the story of how the collection was built. The exhibition presents 50 works from the latest donation alongside nearly as many from previous gifts. The tour begins with expressive Impressionism from the early century and progresses through German Expressionism with its defining artist groups in Munich and Berlin, concluding with New Objectivity from the 1920s and 1930s.
Curator Roman Zieglgänsberger emphasized the significance of the recent donation, stating, "Something big is happening here." The exhibition places this new collection alongside other major collections that have shaped the museum's identity. These include the avant-garde collection of private collector Heinrich Kirchhoff (1874-1934), which was intended for Wiesbaden but was removed by the Nazis and is now scattered across museums worldwide.
Another significant collection featured is that of Hanna Bekker vom Rath, who specified in her will that 30 of her most important works should go to a museum in the Rhine-Main region. Museum Wiesbaden was selected because the collection included works by Jawlensky alongside pieces by Max Beckmann and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. The exhibition also highlights the collection of Frank Brabant, who decided in 2017 to donate half of his art collection to the State Museums in Schwerin, where he was born, and the other half to Museum Wiesbaden, where his collection was developed.
The exhibition's subtitle "How Art Comes to Museums" reveals another important aspect of the show's educational mission. Henning explained that curator Zieglgänsberger has worked closely with the anonymous patron for years, building a strong relationship of trust. What makes this collection particularly special is that the collector has carefully aligned his acquisitions with the museum's existing holdings. Before each new acquisition, the patron would ask the thoughtful question: "Is this also interesting for the museum?"
The exhibition "Feininger, Münter, Modersohn-Becker" runs until April 26, 2026, offering visitors an extensive opportunity to explore both the artistic treasures and the fascinating stories of how private collectors and civic engagement have shaped one of Germany's most important museums for modern art.
