Museum Brandhorst

Museum Brandhorst is a museum of modern and contemporary art in Munich, Germany, that opened on 21 May 2009. Located in the Maxvorstadt district within the Kunstareal, it houses the collection of Udo and Anette Brandhorst, heirs of the Henkel trust, and is operated by the Bavarian State Painting Collections. With more than 700 works in the Brandhorst Collection and about 200 on display, the museum has become a significant venue for post-1945 art, distinguished by its holdings of Cy Twombly and Andy Warhol and by its architecturally striking building designed by Sauerbruch Hutton.

Anette Brandhorst, great-granddaughter of Henkel's founder, and her husband Udo Fritz-Hermann began collecting art in 1971. After Anette died of cancer in 1999, Udo donated the collection to the state of Bavaria on the condition that the state provide a fitting building. The construction costs, approximately 47 million euros (about $67 million), were funded by Bavaria. The museum was inaugurated with a state ceremony on 18 May 2009 and opened to the public on 21 May 2009. Since 1 November 2013, Achim Hochdörfer has directed the collection, succeeding Armin Zweite. In 2009, the Brandhorst foundation held an endowment of 120 million euros ($167 million), whose interest provides an annual acquisition budget of more than 2 million euros, exceeding that of any other collection in Munich.

The Brandhorst Collection focuses on artists who have decisively influenced art since 1945. Its greatest strength lies in its depth of holdings of two major American artists: more than 200 works by Cy Twombly, making it the largest Twombly collection in Europe and the largest outside the United States, and over 100 works by Andy Warhol. The collection also encompasses painting, sculpture, graphic works, and photography, with notable groups of works on paper by Kasimir Malevich, Kurt Schwitters, and Joan Miró. Beyond fine art, the Brandhorsts collected literature, resulting in a collection of 112 illustrated books by Pablo Picasso. The museum continues to acquire new works, including a video work by Isaac Julien, Western Union: Small Boats, and the installation Large Red Sphere by Walter De Maria, placed at the nearby Türkentor.

The museum's signature holding is Cy Twombly's monumental Lepanto cycle, a twelve-part painting created in 2001 for the Venice Biennale, which refers to the 1571 naval battle between Ottoman and Holy League forces. Other significant Twombly works include Bacchus, Summer Madness, and Untitled (Roses). The Andy Warhol holdings encompass approximately 100 works including Self-Portrait, Eggs, Knives, Marilyn, and Natalie Wood, as well as Mustard Race Riot (1963), Hammer and Sickle (1976), and The Last Supper (1986). Additional notable works include Joseph Beuys's Wo ist mein Schmuck? Wo sind meine Scheiben, meine Zaumzeuge?; Damien Hirst's Waste, In this terrible moment we are victims clinging helplessly to an environment that refuses to acknowledge the soul, and Looking Forward to a Complete Suppression of Pain; Sigmar Polke's Die drei Lügen der Malerei and Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité; John Chamberlain's Lord Suckfist; Bruce Nauman's 2 Heads on Base #1 and Mean Clown Welcome; and Eric Fischl's Living Room, Scene 3 (Spinning) and Japanese Bath.

Designed by Sauerbruch Hutton architects, the museum building stands on the former site of the Türkenkaserne, adjacent to the Pinakothek der Moderne in the Kunstareal. The structure comprises a long, two-storey rectangular main building and a taller, northward-expanded head building of concrete, connected by a continuous ribbon of windows. Its most distinctive feature is the multi-coloured facade of 36,000 vertical ceramic louvres in 23 different coloured glazes, drawn from three colour families, mounted at slight intervals before the concrete walls. Behind the louvres, a perforated, folded metal sheet absorbs traffic noise. The building encompasses approximately 3,200 square metres of exhibition space and 5,300 square metres of usable area across three very high floors, with intermediate levels containing various utility rooms. The entrance at the corner of Türkenstrasse and Theresienstrasse connects the Kunstareal with the bustling Maxvorstadt and university quarter. The interior features white walls and floors and staircases of solid, light Danish oak. Galleries vary in size and floor plan, with the largest halls reaching 450 square metres and 9 metres in height. Translucent textile ceilings distribute natural light evenly, with preference given to daylight over artificial lighting. A specially designed polygonal room on the upper floor accommodates the Lepanto cycle in a panoramic, semicircular arrangement. The building was planned according to advanced energy-efficiency standards, employing heat pumps, groundwater energy via heat exchangers, and component activation for temperature regulation. However, in 2015 the Bavarian Supreme Audit Office criticised that numerous construction defects remained unaddressed five years after opening, including malfunctioning daylight-control technology, higher-than-planned energy consumption, and unmet energy-saving targets.

Museum Brandhorst is located in Munich's Maxvorstadt district, at the corner of Türkenstrasse and Theresienstrasse, within the Kunstareal museum quarter. It is operated by the Bavarian State Painting Collections and owned by the state of Bavaria. The museum's website is www.museum-brandhorst.de. Visitors enter through a spacious foyer containing the museum cash desk, bookshop, and restaurant. From the lounge on the upper floor's north side, visitors have a special view of the Pinakothek museums. The museum connects the Kunstareal with the lively university quarter and the commercial activity of Maxvorstadt.