The Museum Ostwall presents art of the twentieth century. It was opened in 1949 as the first newly founded museum in the still young Federal Republic. In 2010 it moved to the Dortmunder U.
The Metropole Ruhr must constantly reinvent itself. Art and culture help to determine where it stands. The Museum Ostwall is dedicated to this task. Starting with museum founder Leonie Reygers. Exhibiting art and culture in an accessible place, inviting and open to all citizens, that was an essential element of her concept. For this reason, so-called amateur art and museum educational work with children were also close to her heart, for which she was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit.
Following this basic attitude, the permanent exhibition of the Museum Ostwall can be visited free of charge since 2019.
The Creative Idea
The fourth and fifth floors in the Dortmunder U house the actual Museum Ostwall, while the sixth floor is the area for temporary exhibitions. The focus of the fourth floor is on the works of Fluxus. Within the Metropole Ruhr, the Museum Ostwall is considered the first address for this avant-garde art movement of the 1960s. Fluxus celebrates the creative idea alone - a deliberate affront to the elitist understanding of art in bourgeois circles. In the permanent exhibition, works by Joseph Beuys, Allan Kaprow, Milan Knízák, Alison Knowles, Dieter Roth, Daniel Spoerri and Wolf Vostell, among others, can be discovered.
A recommendation is to start a journey backwards through time from Fluxus. It leads through Nouveau Réalisme, Informel and ZERO to Classical Modernism.
Classical Modernism as a Highlight
When the museum was founded, the focus of the collection was on Classical Modernism. What was shown was what was considered "degenerate" by the National Socialists. This department is still a highlight in the Museum Ostwall. In Germany, only the Museum Wiesbaden owns a larger number of works by the painter Alexej von Jawlensky.
The artists' association "Brücke" is represented in the Museum Ostwall primarily by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Otto Mueller, Emil Nolde and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. The "Blauer Reiter" group is represented not only by the aforementioned Alexej von Jawlensky but also by the works of Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc and August Macke.
At the Pulse of the Times
The acquisitions and exhibitions of recent years reveal a museum with its finger on the pulse of the times - and with a good feel for trend-setting photography and video and sound works. This is particularly evident in the formats "Schaufenster" and "Lautsprecher", which exclusively present contemporary artists.
The red thread
The philosophy of the museum's founder Leonie Reygers runs as a red thread through the entire U. Starting with the KunstAktionsRaum (ArtActionRoom) and action points integrated into the exhibition, where visitors to the Museum Ostwall can get creative themselves, to initiatives that are only possible at the new location in the Dortmunder U. The museum's new location in the Dortmunder U is the perfect place to start: Anyone wandering through the building will find workshops and media labs on the second floor (UZWEI - Cultural Education), for example, which are aimed at interested parties of all generations. Playful and interactive, these facilities allow the lowest possible threshold access to discourses on all genres of art.
Weather
