Museum Wiesbaden

The Museum Wiesbaden is a two-branch museum of art and natural history located in the Hessian capital of Wiesbaden, Germany. It is one of the five Hessian State museums, alongside those in Kassel, Darmstadt, Saalburg, and Glauberg. Established in 1825, the institution traces its origins to the civic engagement of local citizens and the influence of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Today, the museum is recognized internationally for its collections, particularly its holdings of works by Alexej von Jawlensky, and was named Museum of the Year in 2007 by the International Association of Art Critics.

The museum's foundation traces back to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who stayed in Wiesbaden in 1814 and 1815. In 1825, he persuaded Frankfurt private collectors Johann Isaac von Gerning and Johann Christian Gerning to donate their extensive collections of art, antiquities, and naturalia to the Duchy of Nassau in exchange for a life annuity. Under the administration of three newly founded associations, the Verein fur Nassauische Altertumskunde und Geschichtsforschung (founded 1812), the Nassauischer Verein fur Naturkunde, and the Nassauischer Kunstverein, the collections grew rapidly. In 1821, the three museums and the regional library moved into the Hereditary Prince's Palace on Wilhelmstrasse. By the mid-nineteenth century, the palace became too small. After coming under Prussian control in 1866, the city of Wiesbaden took over the institutions in 1899. A new three-wing building designed by architect Theodor Fischer was begun in 1913. The Gemaldegalerie opened on October 1, 1915, followed by the natural history collection, though the Natural Sciences Museum and the Museum of Nassau Antiquities did not open until July 15, 1920 due to the First World War. During the Second World War, the building was partly used for military purposes. Although the collections largely survived unscathed, the exhibitions were dismantled and showcases damaged. After 1945, American forces turned the museum into a Central Collecting Point, temporarily exhibiting stored art treasures like the bust of Nefertiti and the painting The Man with the Golden Helmet. Postwar rebuilding was slow, hampered by the loss of modern works to the Nazi Entartete Kunst campaign and the continued occupation of rooms by an American library and a city archive. In 1973, the three museums came into the possession of the state of Hesse and were united as the Museum Wiesbaden. The Nassauischer Kunstverein was relocated to a historic villa at Wilhelmstrasse 15.

The museum functions as a two-branch institution dedicated to art and natural history, having transferred its former antiquities collection to the Stadtmuseum am Markt in 2009. The art collection focuses primarily on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, though it maintains a select group of Old Masters emphasizing Italian and Flemish works from the fifteenth century onward, as well as German Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, and Classicism pieces. The natural history collection, founded in 1829 by the Nassau Society of Natural Science with ducal support, covers geology, paleontology, and biology, with international collection abbreviations MWNH and WIES for its herbarium. In 2019, the museum significantly expanded its scope through the donation of more than 500 works and objects from collector Ferdinand W. Neess, making it one of the world's richest museums in the fields of Art Nouveau and Symbolist art.

The most significant holding of the museum is its Alexej von Jawlensky collection, the second largest worldwide after the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena. It comprises 57 paintings and 35 graphic works, including Stillleben mit Krug und Buch, Dame mit Facher, Nikita, a Self-Portrait from 1912, and examples from his Variationen, Abstrakten Kopfe, and Meditationen series. This collection was greatly expanded in 1987 by the Hanna Bekker vom Rath donation, which added eleven Jawlensky paintings and three drawings, including Bildnis Marianne von Werefkin from 1906. The Bekker vom Rath donation also brought sixteen works by other classical modernists, including paintings by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Adolf Holzel, Ida Kerkovius, Willi Baumeister, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, and Max Beckmann, plus prints by Wassily Kandinsky and August Macke. Other modern acquisitions include works by Paula Modersohn-Becker, Otto Mueller, Emil Nolde, and Jawlensky's companion Marianne von Werefkin. The Old Masters collection features Italian artists like Tintoretto, Sebastiano del Piombo, and Luca Giordano, and Flemish artists such as Joos van Cleve, Gerard van Honthorst, and Frans Snyders, alongside Germans like Lucas Cranach the Elder and Angelika Kauffmann. The Neess donation added exceptional Art Nouveau and Symbolist pieces, including furniture by Guimard, Galle, and Majorelle, and paintings by Gustave Moreau, Fernand Khnopff, Franz von Stuck, and Edward Burne-Jones. The former antiquities collection held notable Roman stone monuments, highlighted by the Mithra stone from the ancient Mithraeum of Nida in Heddernheim, a giant Jupiter column from Schierstein, and an enthroned Jupiter from Igstadt.

The museum is situated at the corner of Wilhelmstrasse and Rheinstrasse, on the site formerly occupied by the banker's villa Mons, which had housed the reception building of the Ludwigsbahnhof until 1906. The current structure, a three-wing building designed by architect Theodor Fischer, had its foundation stone laid in 1913. The interior architecture was heavily influenced by the specific needs of the three museum directors and curators. The building underwent extensive renovations by Kassel architects Schultze and Schulze, starting with the art collection rooms from 1994 to 1997, followed by the roofs, entrance area, and lecture hall from 2003 to 2006. The north and south wings were renovated between 2007 and 2012. Since 2013, the natural history collection has been exhibited in the north wing, while the freed south wing presents Old Masters alongside contemporary art, abandoning a chronological layout in favor of thematic rooms such as sacred art, portraiture, mythology, landscape, and still life.

The Museum Wiesbaden is located in the Sudost district of Wiesbaden, Germany, and operates as a state museum under the ownership of the state of Hesse. The institution has been directed by Alexander Klar since 2010, who succeeded Volker Rattemeyer following his 23-year tenure. The museum maintains an active exhibition role, with the natural history collection on view in the north wing since 2013, and the art collection, including the Old Masters and contemporary art, displayed in the south wing. The former Collection of Nassau Antiquities was transferred to the Stadtmuseum am Markt in 2009. Further information regarding access and programming is available on the institution's website.