Museum Folkwang — Attraction in Essen

Disorder and lack of coherent display of artworks. The spaces of this museum are actually huge, but they are not rationally exploited: The managers have tried to mix in the same room , for example, an ancient Egyptian statue next to the expressionism artworks : There is no clear meaning in doing this . The visitors have no chance to understand where is the logical or historical link between ancien Egypt statuary and Expressionismus. This is just one of the many examples I collected during my visit. Nolde is in one room, then in another and moreover in another. But there is no Leitmotiv in such a display , no chronology and no link among artworks. Frankly it gives the impression of visiting a storeroom. Folkwang in the past was better placed when organising an exhibition on ONE artist or on ONE mainstream school of artists. But its permanent collection, albeit on rotation of artworks, has deceived me beyond any expectations. We are however grateful for the kindness from the museum managers to let the admission...

Easily my favourite visit in Essen. Small as art museums go, but the architecture suits the work well, it's light and airy and quiet. Collection is diverse and I liked that it wasn't split by art movement like in a lot of museums (it's curated by mood and theme). They had a super fascinating ranking of provenance in some of the collection which I would like to see picked up as a methodology in more museums, and the explanation gave a rare and valuable insight into the working of museums, which felt really special. Also, they had a Barnett Newman, which I did not know going in, and it's breathtaking.

Rather excessive number of security guards here though (like 2-3 per room??!), and one of them kept pacing across the room and back again and snorting which was a little distracting in a quiet museum 😅 Staff on the front desk and Garderobe were very kind however and generally an...

Architecturally the building is amazing. The permanente collection is overall pretty good, has quite a few contemporary masters and some interesting minors particularly from the Neue Sachlichkeit and I did not pay. But really need a curatorial overhaul, thematic rooms are maybe good for kids, not for a thinking adult. In particular if the themes are so abstract and the paintings do not speak with each other. Also you can’t put Braque and Picasso right beside a festival poster. I found very interesting & cool the scoring system for paintings’ provenance during WWII, to rank how clear or murky their history was. I wish the same would be done for the “exotic” pieces they have but I guess we would see a lot of red dots.

The staff were incredibly friendly and the temporary exhibition was interesting and...