Liebieghaus

The Liebieghaus is a sculpture museum in Frankfurt, Germany, housed in a late 19th-century villa on the Sachsenhausen bank of the River Main. Officially known as the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung, it forms part of the Museumsufer, the city's celebrated museum embankment. The collection comprises approximately 3,000 sculptures spanning over 5,000 years of cultural history, from ancient Egypt to Neoclassicism, making it one of Europe's most significant repositories of three-dimensional art. Its encyclopedic holdings, acquired primarily through international purchases and endowments rather than regional bequests, offer a uniquely global perspective on the history of sculpture.

The Liebieghaus was built in 1896 to designs by Munich architect Leonhard Romeis as a retirement residence for Baron Heinrich von Liebieg (1839-1904), a Bohemian textile manufacturer. The city of Frankfurt acquired the property in 1907 and converted it into a museum for the municipal sculpture collection, which opened in 1909 under its first director, Georg Swarzenski. Paul Kanold added a gallery wing in 1909, later extended in 1990 by Scheffler and Warschauer. A major renovation, designed by the Berlin office Kuehn Malvezzi, was completed in October 2009, coinciding with the museum's centenary. This project introduced a publicly accessible "Open Depot" in the gallery wing basement, allowing visitors to view works not on permanent display for the first time. The museum's scholarly leadership has included notable figures such as Anton Legner, Herbert Beck (1969-2006), and archaeologist Vinzenz Brinkmann, who has directed the antiquities collection since 2006. Max Hollein served as director from January 2006 to 2016, when Philipp Demandt succeeded him. Stefan Roller has headed the Medieval Department since 2006.

The Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung is distinguished by its universal, internationally oriented collection, assembled largely through purchases on the global art market and through donations rather than regional aristocratic collections or secularized church property. Relatively few works have strong connections to Frankfurt itself. The collection encompasses ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman sculpture; Medieval, Renaissance, Mannerist, Baroque, and Rococo pieces; Neoclassical works; and art from East Asia and other regions. In 2019, the museum acquired over 200 ivory sculptures from the Middle Ages, Baroque, and Rococo periods from the estate of Reiner Winkler, representing the most significant expansion of its holdings in the institution's history. This acquisition is presented in the permanent exhibition "Splendid White" in the gallery wing basement.

Among the collection's highlights are reliefs from the mortuary temple of Pharaoh Sahure at Abusir, including scenes of animal sacrifice with preserved color traces; the sarcophagus of the Amun priestess Takait from Egypt's New Kingdom; and a Ptolemaic rose granite statue of Alexander the Great as Pharaoh. Greek and Roman holdings include a marble discobolus, a Roman marble copy of Athena from Myron's Athena-Marsyas group, a Greek alabaster portrait of Alexander the Great from Adolf Furtwängler's collection, and a marble portrait of Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Medieval treasures include Carolingian ivory reliefs of the "Older Metz School" with the testimony of John on a book cover (mid-9th century); an Ottonian crucifix (mid-11th century); a Romanesque royal head from a statue of Île-de-France; fragments from a Florentine tomb by Tino di Camaino (probably after 1318); Hans Multscher's alabaster Throne of Grace (c. 1430); a Woman of the Apocalypse by Tilman Riemenschneider; the Rimini Altar, a multi-figure northern French alabaster Crucifixion group (c. 1430); and Nikolaus Gerhaert's bust of Barbara von Ottenheim (1463-64). Johann Heinrich Dannecker's Ariadne on the Panther (1803-1805), acquired by banker Simon Moritz von Bethmann in 1810, is preserved in the depot while a replica stands in the garden. Other significant pieces include the ivory Fury on a Rearing Horse (1610) by the so-called Master of the Furies.

The Liebieghaus stands on Schaumainkai in a garden setting where sculptures are displayed outdoors, including a replica of Dannecker's Ariadne on the Panther beneath a small grove of trees. The original villa, designed by Leonhard Romeis in a palatial historicist style, was conceived as a retirement residence. The 2009 renovation by Kuehn Malvezzi reconfigured the exhibition spaces, which now cover 1,600 square meters, and added the Open Depot. The extended gallery wing serves particularly for the presentation of the antiquities collection. The building's location on the Museumsufer places it within Frankfurt's densest concentration of cultural institutions along the southern bank of the Main.

The Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung is located on the Schaumainkai in Frankfurt's Sachsenhausen district, part of the Museumsufer on the southern bank of the River Main. It is municipally owned and operated. The museum presents its permanent collections across 1,600 square meters of exhibition space, supplemented by temporary exhibitions that have included "Gods in Color" (2008/2009, with a return as "Gods in Color, Golden Edition" in 2020/2021), "Nikolaus Gerhaert. The Medieval Sculptor" (2011/2012), "Jeff Koons. The Sculptor" (2012), "Back to Classic. Ancient Greece Reconsidered" (2013), "Dangerous Liaisons. The Art of the French Rococo" (2015/2016), "Mission Rimini" (2021/2022), and "Machine Room of the Gods" (2023/2024). The Open Depot in the gallery wing basement allows public access to portions of the collection not on permanent display.