The Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe is housed in a beautiful old mansion in Hamburg's old town. Thematic exhibitions and expositions are housed on three spacious floors, and the manor house also has an originally designed buffet restaurant. The museum's halls are divided into separate exhibitions with items from the 6th to 9th centuries, the European Middle Ages and modern installations.
Contemporary installations are of interest to adult museum visitors, especially those who consider themselves fans of fresh art ideas. Children, on the other hand, will be drawn to the other exhibits. The Museum of Arts and Crafts has the best collections of applied arts, decorative elements, clothing and home textiles, as well as everyday objects of all kinds. There are also graphic works, photographs and much more on the history of art.
A bit of history
The Hamburg Arts and Crafts Museum was founded in 1866, initially as the Museum für Kunst und Industrie (Museum for Art and Industry), and its main task was to educate craftsmen, factory owners and the general public in matters directly related to design and decoration, and to introduce them to the applied arts.
The aim was to educate the population and improve their taste in dressing and furnishing their own homes. The idea behind the museum proved to be a good one: the establishment of the museum aroused the public's interest not only in specific examples of design, but also in art history in general.
The museum was founded by Justus Brinkman, who was also its director from 1877 to 1915 and who gave the museum its present name. In 1900 Justus Brinkman opened a new exhibition in the museum: the fashion department. After visiting an important exhibition in Paris, he brought back to Hamburg the largest collection of German fashion artefacts at the time. This was the beginning of the renovated museum, which grew year by year and was updated with new collections of historical and contemporary objects.
During the Second World War, when Hamburg was heavily bombed, much of the museum's collection was lost and the building itself was damaged. A few years later, however, all the rooms were restored and the museum was fully operational again.
Museum exhibits
The collection of the Museum of Arts and Crafts is currently recognised as the best in Europe when it comes to collections of applied objects and decorative elements. The ground floor is devoted to the European Renaissance and the Middle Ages, while the first floor is devoted to Egyptian and Asian art.
There are always many young visitors here, while the third floor of the museum, where the best pieces of modern art are displayed, is more popular with their parents. Although some of the exhibits on the third floor are also of interest to children, such as the 'Paris Room', where the interior of an early 20th-century home has been recreated down to the last detail. There are lots of young visitors in this room.
Not far from the Arts and Crafts Museum is the Chocolate Museum, which is also a must for children.
