Terms of Use

About the Collection Online

The Collection Online presents the holdings of the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in digital space. This digital platform offers the interested public worldwide access to cultural heritage outside the opening hours of the two exhibition venues K20 and K21 in Düsseldorf. As a state museum, the Kunstsammlung preserves the art holdings of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The collection is dedicated to modern and contemporary art of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

When the new Collection Online is launched in 2024, a representative selection of works and the associated metadata will be available. The goal is to make the entire collection of the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen accessible online. However, digitally cataloging works of art is time-consuming and costly. It involves researching, verifying, and recording object-related data, as well as producing and processing reproduction photographs. More works are being added on an ongoing basis.

Structure and Function

As a central research platform, the Collection Online allows users to search the museum’s holdings and the associated metadata. A variety of access options invite you to explore the collection: for example, you can search by artist name, filter works by date of creation, or view objects currently on view in K20 and K21.

Advanced Search

The heart of the Collection Online is the Advanced Search, which can be found under the menu tab “Works.” There you will find an overview of all the works of art available online. Using the icon on the right, you can sort the works according to various criteria.

• Alphabetically ascending or descending by artist name
• Chronologically ascending or descending by year of creation

When viewing, you can choose between a list view and a tiled view.

In addition to entering your query in the search field, you can search the collection using various filters. Once you set a filter, the other functions are limited to the possible combinations. This prevents the search query from coming up empty. The following filters are available:

• Material & technique
• Date of creation of the work (either time range or year)
• Year of acquisition (the year a work was purchased for the collection)
• Keywords
• Currently on display
• New acquisitions (works that have been acquired since 2017)

List of Artists

The “Artists” page contains an alphabetical list of all artists whose work is represented in the Collection Online. Select a name to view the corresponding works.

Albums

Related works are grouped together in thematic albums—for example, all new acquisitions in recent years. Please check back as more albums will be added.

Work Details Page

Click on a work of art to learn about it. You will be taken to a “Work Details” page that lists detailed information from the museum’s database. This includes information on the provenance (ownership history) and exhibition history of the work. Take advantage of the opportunity to research further literature on the works in our specialized library, the Werner Schmalenbach Library, in K20.

On the “Work Details” page, you can enlarge and zoom in on the image. You can choose between a black and a white background.

Images

The majority of the works in the collection of the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen are protected by copyright. Any use of reproductions of copyrighted works must be cleared with and approved by the artists and/or rights holders. For this reason, images of works of art are not available for download.

Provision of Images

For the provision of reproduction photographs of works from the holdings of the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, please send an e-mail to: vertrieb [​at​] kunstsammlung.de.

We work together with bpk-Bildagentur (Image Bank of Cultural Institutions) in Berlin and will forward your request.

Provenance Research

Following the December 1998 Washington Declaration of the Jewish Claims Conference and the German government’s “Joint Declaration by the Federal Government, the Länder and the national associations of local authorities on the tracing and return of Nazi-confiscated art, especially Jewish property,” the Kunstsammlung felt obliged to intensify its ongoing research into the provenance of its holdings. Between 2009 and 2012, a systematic examination of the works in the collection was carried out with regard to the ownership of works created before 1945. The provenance research was conducted by Volkmar Essers, Gesa Jeuthe Vietzen, Isgard Kracht, Anette Kruszynski, and, in the case of the works by the artist Paul Klee, Stefan Frey. This was made possible thanks to the financial support of the Center for Provenance Research at the Institute for Museum Research in Berlin (since 2015 the German Lost Art Foundation). The results of the project have been published.[1]

Since then, research into the provenance of the works in the collection has continued. The Kunstsammlung receives expert support and advice, in particular from the provenance researchers Gesa Jeuthe Vietzen and Isgard Kracht.

Since 2012, all works whose ownership between 1933 and 1945 could not be completely clarified have been published in the Lost Art Database of the German Lost Art Foundation. Together with fourteen other museums, the Kunstsammlung has also been participating in the digital project www.alfredflechtheim.de since 2012. This brings together works of art associated with the gallerist Alfred Flechtheim (1878–1937).

Disclaimer

The Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen is committed to non-discriminatory and gender-neutral language. However, since the revision of older texts is an ongoing process, it is possible that not all texts meet today’s standards of sensitive language. We kindly ask for your understanding.

For technical reasons, not all object information is currently available in English. However, the provenance texts for the works in the collection are available in English.

Contact

Should you have any questions or suggestions, please send us an e-mail to: service [​at​] kunstsammlung.de.