Museum Angewandte Kunst

As a vibrant place of discovery, the Museum Angewandte Kunst endeavours to keep its finger on the pulse of currents and developments in society, with a special emphasis on design and fashion.

Against the background of its prominent collections of outstanding works of applied art, it strives to shed light on the obscure and create relationships between the events and stories revolving around things of the concluded past, the emerging present and the immanent future. The changing exhibitions tell of cultural values and evolving life circumstances given shape and expression with new forms.

With its new presentation formats, the Museum Angewandte Kunst distances itself from the traditional criteria for museological collection and organization dating from the nineteenth century. The approach to the museum’s exhibits solely from the perspective of their history has made way for the negotiation of timely and untimely reflections. This leads in turn to the emergence of issues encountered in thematic exhibitions with ever new object constellations.

The presentation Elementary Parts: From the Collections opened in 2014 is a core component of this endeavour. For this “heart chamber of the museum”, objects are selected from the many areas of the collection, regions of the world and eras of the past, and placed side by side in all their dissimilarity. In this way the Museum Angewandte Kunst shows its potential and exposes both the history of its holdings and the point of departure for curatorial praxis.