Gunzenhauser Museum

Modern art in a converted savings bank, with exceptional holdings of German Expressionism and New Objectivity

The museum is housed in a 1930 Neue Sachlichkeit bank building in the southern city centre — the architecture is appropriately restrained for a collection that prizes precision and clarity over expressionist emotion, though the expressionists are there too. New Objectivity is the real strength: Dix, Schlichter, and Grosz are represented in depth, alongside the Expressionists and works from the Bauhaus orbit.

The Gunzenhauser is quieter than the Kunstsammlungen and often uncrowded, which makes it an easier place to look at pictures. The quality is uniformly high. If you have time for only one Chemnitz art museum, this is the harder choice — both are genuinely excellent.

things to do museum
A story
Alfred Gunzenhauser was a Munich art dealer who spent decades quietly assembling one of the finest private collections of early 20th-century German art in existence. When he gave it to the city of Chemnitz in 2005 — some 2,500 works — it was one of the most significant cultural donations in postwar Germany. The collection came home to Saxony, not to a major capital, and that still seems remarkable.

Other places in Things to Do