Museum Folkwang

The Museum Folkwang holds one of Germany's finest collections of nineteenth and twentieth-century European art: Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, German Romantics, Expressionists, and significant holdings in design and photography. The building was rebuilt in 2010 by David Chipperfield in a design that gives the museum's natural light the same attention as the works on the walls.

The collection is strongest in French Impressionism and German Expressionism — works by Monet, Cézanne, Gauguin, and van Gogh alongside Kirchner, Schmidt-Rottluff, and Nolde. The photography collection is one of the best in Germany and includes work from the nineteenth century through to contemporary practice. Admission is free for under-18s; the permanent collection is often less crowded than the building's quality deserves.

things to do museum
A story
The Folkwang collection was assembled by Karl Ernst Osthaus, an industrialist who opened it in Hagen in 1902 — the first public museum in Germany devoted to modern art. When Osthaus died in debt in 1921, the collection was bought by the city of Essen rather than see it dispersed. The purchase infuriated Hagen, and the rivalry between the two cities over the collection's rightful home persisted for decades.