Museum für Moderne Kunst

The Museum für Moderne Kunst, commonly known as the MMK, is a museum of modern and contemporary art in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Founded in 1981, it opened to the public on 6 June 1991 and occupies a prominent position on the Museumsufer, the city's Museum Riverbank along the southern bank of the Main River. The museum is distinguished by its triangular building designed by Viennese architect Hans Hollein, which has earned it the popular nickname Tortenstück, or "piece of cake." Since 2018, the institution has been directed by Susanne Pfeffer. With over 5,000 works by approximately 600 artists spanning from the 1960s to the present, the MMK has established itself as a significant force in the presentation and collection of international contemporary art.

The genesis of the MMK lay in the postwar cultural transformation of Frankfurt. Much of the city's Altstadt had been destroyed during the Second World War, creating what was perceived as a cultural deficit that new construction projects in the 1970s sought to address. The idea for a museum dedicated to modern art originated with Peter Iden, an influential theatre and art critic at the Frankfurter Rundschau, who became the museum's founding director and served from 1978 to 1987. Iden found crucial political support in Mayor Walter Wallmann of the CDU and Hilmar Hoffmann, head of the cultural department for the SPD. Heinrich Klotz, a Marburg-based art and architecture theorist, also figured among the initiators. The city magistrate approved the project on 10 May 1979, though an initial proposal to house both an architecture museum and a contemporary art museum under one roof was abandoned due to spatial constraints and the decision to acquire works from the Ströher collection. In 1989, Swiss art historian and curator Jean-Christophe Ammann arrived from the Kunsthalle Basel to become the MMK's first director, officially opening the museum on 6 June 1991. Ammann introduced the innovative Change of Scene exhibition model, which ran twenty times from 1992 to 2001-02 and involved rearranging the museum's holdings every six months while incorporating new acquisitions, loans, and special exhibitions. This approach garnered international renown. Udo Kittelmann directed the museum from 2002 to 2008, followed by Susanne Gaensheimer from January 2009 until August 2017, when she departed to lead the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf. Peter Gorschlüter served as acting director before Susanne Pfeffer, previously at the Museum Fridericianum in Kassel, assumed the directorship in January 2018. Under Gaensheimer's leadership, the museum and its director were commissioned to curate the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2011 and 2013.

The MMK's collection encompasses more than 5,000 works by approximately 600 artists, covering all genres of modern and contemporary art from the 1960s to the present day. The holdings include painting, sculpture, video, photography, light and sound installations, and performance works, representing both national and international positions. The foundation of the collection was laid through the acquisition of 87 works from the estate of Karl Ströher, a Darmstadt industrialist and collector who had originally bequeathed them to his native city on condition that a museum be built to house them. When Darmstadt failed to approve funds, Ströher's heirs sold the core ensemble to Frankfurt and donated Roy Lichtenstein's painting Yellow and Green Brushstrokes to the museum. This initial nucleus was strong in Pop art and Minimalism. Between 1981 and 1987, Peter Iden expanded the collection with works from the 1970s and 1980s. Later acquisitions were made under Jean-Christophe Ammann's directorship. A significant addition came in 2006, when the MMK, together with the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein and the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, acquired the private collection of Cologne art dealer Rolf Ricke, comprising works by Richard Artschwager, Bill Bollinger, Donald Judd, Gary Kuehn, and Steven Parrino. The photography collection includes notable artists such as Thomas Ruff, Barbara Klemm, Jeff Wall, and Jock Sturges.

The Ströher Collection remains the cornerstone of the MMK's holdings, featuring major artists since the 1950s including Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Carl Andre, John Chamberlain, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Roy Lichtenstein, Walter de Maria, Robert Morris, Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, Frank Stella, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann, and George Segal, the latter represented by his Jazz Combo. Specific highlighted works include Jasper Johns's Target from 1966 and Roy Lichtenstein's Yellow and Green Brushstrokes from 1966. Joseph Beuys occupies an important place in the collection, and his installation Blitzschlag mit Lichtschein auf Hirsch was notably incorporated into the building's design with a custom two-story space. The museum also holds work by Jim Dine. The Rolf Ricke collection acquisition brought in additional significant pieces by Donald Judd and others. One notable episode in the museum's history involved Gerhard Richter's RAF Zyklus '18 Oktober 1977', which was among the museum's top works from its opening in 1991, initially held on long-term loan from the artist; Richter later surprised observers by selling the cycle to the Museum of Modern Art in New York instead.

The MMK building was designed by Viennese architect Hans Hollein, who won the open architectural competition on 17 May 1983. This victory came three years after his proposal for the city's Museum für angewandte Kunst had finished a close second to Richard Meier's design. Peter Iden developed the spatial program for the museum, and Hollein's design was realized with hardly any alterations. Groundbreaking was delayed until 1987, with the topping-out ceremony held in 1988; the completed building cost approximately $38 million. Hollein shaped the structure to its three-sided site at the corner of Domstraße and Braubachstraße, creating a building whose height adapts to its surroundings in the historic Altstadt. The architect's fundamental premise was that no museum space could be neutral, but rather that characteristic rooms of different scales enter into a dialectic with the artwork, mutually potentiating each other. The triangular footprint produces wedge-shaped rooms at the narrow end, yielding 3,500 square meters of exhibition space across three main levels. The building houses exhibition galleries on three principal floors, with an administration area on the mezzanine level above the entrance and cafeteria. The library and archive are also located in this area. The entire museum has a basement containing workshops, storage depots, and a lecture hall. The distinctive triangular form and facade design have made the building popularly known as the Tortenstück, or "piece of cake," a motif that was taken up by Claes Oldenburg in his artistic engagement with the museum. The main entrance at the corner of Domstraße and Braubachstraße establishes a connection to the historic old town.

The Museum für Moderne Kunst operates three distinct locations in Frankfurt am Main. The primary museum is located at Domstraße 10, designated MUSEUM MMK FÜR MODERNE KUNST. The TOWERMMK is situated at Taunustor 1 in the Taunusturm building. A third site, the ZOLLAMTMMK at Domstraße 3, serves as a satellite exhibition space. The MMK Zollamt has belonged to the museum since 1999 and is housed in a building directly opposite the main museum that formerly served as the City of Frankfurt's Main Customs Office. This building has been completely modernized, and since 2007 it has regularly presented artistic positions by younger artists or lesser-known figures with the support of the Jürgen Ponto-Stiftung. The museum's central location on the Museumsufer places it within Frankfurt's broader cultural corridor along the Main River. The institution maintains its website at https://www.mmk.art.