Osthaus-Museum Hagen

The Osthaus Museum Hagen is a municipal art museum for modern art in Hagen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Named after the art patron Karl Ernst Osthaus, the institution occupies a building whose interior was originally designed by Henry van de Velde. It stands as a significant cultural site, housing major collections of paintings by Christian Rohlfs and Emil Schumacher, alongside the Karl Ernst Osthaus-Archive, a major depository of documents relating to the early 20th century avant garde. Since 2024, the museum has been directed by Rainer Stamm.

Karl Ernst Osthaus commissioned Berlin architect Carl Gerard to construct the museum in 1898, but in 1900 decided to have the interior executed by Henry van de Velde. The Museum Folkwang opened in 1902 as the world's first museum for contemporary art, now considered modern art. Osthaus organized numerous exhibitions there, including a 1907 show of the Brücke group, and maintained contacts with artists like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, and Alexander Archipenko. In 1909, he founded a second institution, the Deutsche Museum für Kunst in Handel und Gewerbe, which toured exemplary applied arts. After Osthaus died in 1921 at age 46, his heirs sold the Folkwang collection and naming rights to the city of Essen in 1922. The collections of his second museum were sold to the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Museum in Krefeld. Hagen lost its collections, and the empty building was converted into offices for the local electric company, resulting in the loss of much of the interior. A replacement institution, the Christian-Rohlfs-Museum, opened in 1930 in the Villa Post. In 1934, the Nazis renamed it the Städtisches Museum Haus der Kunst and purged works they deemed degenerate, confiscating around 400 works by Rohlfs and many others in 1937. The museum was renamed the Karl-Ernst-Osthaus-Museum in 1939 because an edict reserved the Haus der Kunst name for Munich. Further losses occurred during World War II bombings and looting. After the war, the institution reopened in late 1945 under director Herta Hesse, who aimed to recapture the lost Folkwang legacy. In 1955, the city art museum moved back into the old Folkwang building on Hochstraße. Under Michael Fehr, the museum adopted a playful attitude toward local history, creating large installations that commented on Hagen's inability to transcend its Osthaus past. The museum closed from 2006 until August 2009, reopening as the Osthaus Museum Hagen, a spelling that integrates the city name and discards the Nazi-era naming convention.

The museum's collection stems from private donations and gradual purchases, rebuilt after World War II to recapture what the city lost when the Folkwang collection was sold. It focuses on Art Nouveau and expressionist art, particularly artists associated with Osthaus or his Hohenhagen art colony. Today, the museum is divided into two main departments: classical modernism and contemporary art. Some displays reference the original Folkwang collection. The museum also houses the Karl Ernst Osthaus-Archive, a major depository of documents concerning the Folkwang Museum and early 20th century avant garde art and architecture. Since the 1990s, the museum has published its own writings through the Neuer Folkwang Verlag im Karl-Ernst-Osthaus-Museum Hagen.

The museum houses one of the main collections of paintings by Christian Rohlfs and the most important collection of paintings by Emil Schumacher, both considered Hagen artists. A dedicated room in the upper story features works by Rohlfs. Other notable exhibited artists include sculptors Karl Albiker and Alexander Archipenko, painter and graphic artist Otto Dix, painters Erich Heckel and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, sculptor Ansgar Nierhoff, artist and author Hans-Peter Porzner, and painter Franziskus Wendels. The museum also features environmental art by Herman de Vries, the German branch of the Museum of Jurassic Technology, and the room-filling installation Die Architektur der Erinnerung by Sigrid Sigurdsson, located in the historical entrance hall.

The center of the museum is the original Folkwang building, whose interior was designed by Henry van de Velde. Between 1906 and 1908, Osthaus and van de Velde also realized the Hohenhagen artist colony and the Hohenhof residence. The original interior design of the museum was largely lost when the building was converted into electric company offices, and further damaged by World War II bombings. A restoration and partial reconstruction of the van de Velde Art Nouveau interior was financed by donations and completed for the 1991 Henry van de Velde exhibition. The interior has been restored several times and now provides a reasonable approximation of Osthaus's original museum. The building underwent major renovations before its 2009 reopening.

The Osthaus Museum Hagen is located in Hagen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Since 2009, it has formed the Kunstquartier Hagen alongside the Emil-Schumacher-Museum, which opened concurrently. The museum offers educational programs through the Junge Museum, located in the basement. It is open to the public and continues to serve as a municipal art museum for modern art, supplementing its classical modern and contemporary displays with changing presentations of non-objective color painting.