Museum of Art Palace

The Museum Kunstpalast is one of the main museums in Düsseldorf. Founded in 1883, the Kunstpalast preserves a rich artistic collection: in addition to paintings and sculptures from the Middle Ages to today, there are special collections of applied arts and design, graphics, photography and an important collection of glass, for a total of over 100,000 objects . The original nucleus of the collection has its roots in the seventeenth century: it was in fact the collection of Giovanni Guglielmo of the Palatinate, his wife Anna Maria Luisa de 'Medici, and some wealthy citizens of Düsseldorf.

The Gemäldegalerie includes around 3,000 paintings from the Renaissance to Impressionism, with a focus on Dutch and Flemish painting from the 17th century, Roman and Northern Italian paintings from the 17th to 18th centuries, including a collection of 350 oil sketches from the Baroque period, as well as paintings from Classicism and the 19th century, notably the Düsseldorf School of Painting from 1819 to 1918. The Sculpture and Applied Arts section comprises a total of over 1,300 objects and mainly collects sculptures from the Middle Ages, Gothic and Baroque, as well as furniture and crafts from the fifteenth to the twentieth century and has a collection of objects from Islam, Japan and Southeast Asian art as well as contemporary art Design. The Cabinet of Drawings and Prints holds over 90,000 drawings, watercolors, prints and miniatures on paper and parchment from eight centuries. As for modern art, there are works belonging to movements such as Expressionism, the new objectivity and constructivism. Essential areas of art after 1945 are marked by Informal art, the ZERO group and by Op-Art. The holdings of the "Modern" Department extend to the present day and include sculptures, installations, art objects, new media and exhibition spaces for artists. Finally, the photographic collection of the Kunstpalast, which has existed since 2019, includes about 3500 photographic prints that cover the diversity of the medium in a transversal way from its origins to the present day. The inventory also features examples of 19th century travel photography, Pictorialism, New Seeing and New Objectivity photography from the 1920s and 1930s, as well as subjective photography from the 1950s and fine art photography from the 1920s. 70s and 80s.