Kunstmuseum Bonn

Both the architecture and the collections it houses convey their pleasure in mutual existence. Neither are in competition with the other; both find their expression in coalition with the building. The Kunstmuseum Bonn built by Axel Schultes is the most important postwar museum construction, making it the culmination of the museum boom in Germany. The building is an architectural end-in-itself as well as a conservational shell. It makes high claims for itself, but also for the collections. Schultes operates openly; his art museum has three entrances; he designed the staircase to be a precisely cut, jewel-like geometry. His concept of light brings the collection to life. Light streams through the rooms as though poured from a watering can. It was the architecture that made the museum internationally known. In interplay with Gustav Peichl's building, the Art and Exhibition Hall of the German Republic that faces it, it enhances its own specific valency as architecture