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Art, Architecture And Design At The Pinakothek Der Moderne

Like Berlin’s Museum Isle, Munich’s also has an art quarter or Kunstareal where you can visit a bunch of museums, including Museum Brandhorst, Egypt Museum Munich, Glyptothek, State Collections of Antiquities, Alte Pinakothek, Neue Pinakothek and Pinakothek der Moderne.

I’ve been feeling like modern art this trip, so I hit up the Pinakothek der Moderne, which is one of the world’s largest spaces for 20th and 21st century art, graphics, architecture, and design.

In fact, Pinakothek der Moderne shares space with 4 independent museums: the Architecture Museum of the Technical University of Munich, the New Collection – Museum of Applied Arts and Design, the Modern Art Collection of the Bavarian State painting collections and the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München – all under one roof. Or should I say stunning rotunda with a 25 metre high glass dome?

With more than 20,000 works in its collection, the Pinakothek der Moderne is one of the world’s leading museums for paintings, photography, and new media. Among their collection are masterpieces from Salvador Dali, Paul Klee, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, René Magritte, Wassily Kandinsky and Andy Warhol.

My favourite part of the museum was the Design Museum’s new collection featuring mid-century furniture, first gen apple macintosh computers, classic cars, and other retro artifacts.

And check out the Audi design wall with 1,800 models of the UR-Quattro made from aluminum and displayed to resemble a vertical car carpet.

Some Germans liken the Pinakothek der Moderne to a cement box, but I don’t mind it at all – with its clean lines, wide open spaces and lots of natural light coming through the rotunda. With an exhibition space of more than 12,000 m², it is Germany’s largest modern art museum and is comparable in size to Paris’ Centre Pompidou in Paris or London’s Tate Modern.