The Folkwang Museum is a museum of modern and contemporary art in Essen. Inaugurated in 1902 in the city of Hagen by patron Karl Ernst Osthaus, it had a pioneering role in the field of modern art for a long time. After the death of the founder, the city of Essen bought the collection. The museum exhibits important works by artists at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as Friedrich, Delacroix, Courbet, Manet, Pissarro, Monet (including one of the copies of the series of the Cathedrals of Rouen), Sisley, Renoir, Cézanne, Van Gogh (with the portrait of Armand Roulin), Gauguin, Munch, Rosso, Signac, Matisse, Picasso, Braque, Léger, Chagall, De Chirico, Mondrian, Dalí, Magritte, Miró, Kandinsky, Klee, as well as important authors of the next generation, such as Pollock, Newman, Rothko, Fontana, Frank Stella, Gerhard Richter, Martin Kippenberger.

Great importance is given to the collection of sculptures: around 280 are preserved, including several by Rodin. Osthaus, the museum's founder, had personally met him in Paris. About 12,000 are the graphic works collected in the Museum, such as drawings, watercolors and prints. The core of the 19th-century graphic collection dates back to a 1906 donation from the huge Ludwig-Richter collection. Ernst Gosebruch significantly expanded the Museum's graphic collection by acquiring modern works, including graphic works by Kirchner and Emil Nolde and impressionist drawings.

The museum organizes numerous exhibitions of modern and contemporary art.