Städel Museum, Frankfurt Information

Since its foundation, the Städel Museum has expanded its holdings continually by pursuing an active acquisition policy. Altogether the collection presently comprises some 2,700 paintings, 600 sculptures and more than 100,000 drawings and prints. With its rich holdings, the Städel Museum presents an overview of seven hundred years of European art history – beginning with the early fourteenth century and covering the Renaissance, the Baroque, Early Modern and contemporary art. Among the highlights of this comprehensive collection are works by Holbein the Younger, Cranach the Elder, Dürer, Botticelli, Rembrandt and Vermeer, Degas, Matisse, Monet, Renoir, Picasso, Kirchner, Beckmann and Klee, Bacon, Klein, Serra, Richter and Kippenberger. The Extension of the Städel Museum Museums must develop continually, and their collections must keep pace with the times. When he bequeathed his collection and his fortune to the citizens of this town in 1815, Johann Friedrich Städel specified in his will that this collection be “expanded … and perfected from year to year”. To this day, the Städel has fulfilled this obligation, consistently developing its collections qualitatively and quantitatively over the course of the centuries. Today, once again, structural, spatial and functional limits have been reached; particularly the departments devoted to the twentieth century are as yet unable to spread out in their full breadth. To do justice to the demands of an adequate presentation of the existing collection as well as new acquisitions, increasing visitor numbers and the additional functions of a modern museum, the Städel is planning an extension which will encompass altogether approximately 3,000 square metres of additional collection and exhibition space, thus providing a means of accommodating enlarged holdings as well as new possibilities for their presentation.