Visit the collection pavilion
Make your visit to the collection pavilion as contactless as possible. You can consult these tools on your smartphone:
Download the floor plan (pdf) here.
Click here to read the COVID-19 measures in the Middelheim Museum
Why a new collection pavilion?
Today, Middelheim Museum is best known for its outdoor collection in the art park. But there is also a hidden collection: just over 80% of the works of art are stored in depots, inaccessible to visitors. These works are less suitable, or sometimes unsuitable, for presentation in the park, but they have been acquired by the museum in accordance with its original mission: to provide an international overview of modern sculpture, from its great precursors at the end of the nineteenth century to the present. There are also supporting collections with models, drawings and prints, media art and photography. And there are sculptures that were meant for display outdoors but turned out to be more suitable for indoors.
Middelheim Museum unpacks
Because the existing pavilions in the park do not offer the right storage conditions for presenting these often vulnerable works for a long period of time, and because the museum wants to offer maximum access to the collections in all their diversity, it has transformed one such closed repository into an open depot. There, an initial and often surprising selection of artworks has been unpacked for the public. The museum invites the visitor to become acquainted with this “sleeping” collection and continue to discover its new perspectives in the future.
The story of the new collection pavilion is multifaceted. Read more about the pavilion itself, the depot collections, how the artworks were selected and the first individual artwork in focus.