Museum Folkwang
The Garden of Saint-Paul Hospital by Vincent van Gogh | |
| Established | 9 July 1902 |
|---|---|
| Location | Essen, Germany |
| Coordinates | 51°26′30″N 7°00′15″E / 51.44167°N 7.00417°E |
| Type | Modern art museum |
| Key holdings | Mountain Landscape with Rainbow by Caspar David Friedrich |
| Visitors | 800,000 in 2010 |
| Director | Peter Gorschlüter |
| Public transit access | Essen Stadtbahn: U11 at Rüttenscheider Stern |
| Website | museum-folkwang.de |
Museum Folkwang is a major collection of 19th- and 20th-century art in Essen, Germany. The museum was established in 1922 by merging the Essener Kunstmuseum, which was founded in 1906, and the private Folkwang Museum of the collector and patron Karl Ernst Osthaus in Hagen, founded in 1902.
The term Folkwang derives from the name of the afterlife meadow of the dead, Fólkvangr, presided over by the Norse goddess Freyja.
Museum Folkwang incorporates the Deutsche Plakat Museum (German poster museum), comprising circa 340,000 posters from politics, economy and culture. During a visit in Essen in 1932, Paul J. Sachs called the Folkwang "the most beautiful museum in the world."
In 2007, David Chipperfield designed an extension, which was built onto the older building.