Museum Küppersmühle (MKM)

The Museum Küppersmühle (MKM) occupies a converted grain mill and silo on the edge of Duisburg's Inner Harbour. The conversion was carried out by Herzog & de Meuron — the architects responsible for London's Tate Modern — who added a distinctive red staircase tower to the solid brick industrial shell while leaving the basic structure intact.

The collection focuses on post-war and contemporary German art, with particular depth in the work of Gerhard Richter, Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer, and Jörg Immendorff. It is a serious collection, assembled over decades by Sylvia and Ulrich Ströher, and represents some of the most significant German art of the second half of the 20th century. The combination of industrial architecture and heavyweight painting feels right: the scale of the building matches the ambition of the work.

things to do museum
A story
The building was a grain silo and mill that closed in 1972. Herzog & de Meuron — the architects of the Tate Modern in London — converted it in 1999, adding a striking red staircase tower to the industrial brick shell. The collection was assembled by Ströher, a German collector who focused heavily on post-war German art: Richter, Baselitz, Kiefer, and Immendorff in depth.

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