Wallraf-Richartz Museum

Brief information

The present museum lives in a cubic building from 2001, although its collection grew out of a much older gift to the city. Ferdinand Franz Wallraf bequeathed manuscripts, seals, books, paintings, engravings, coins, vessels, and antiquities to Cologne; from this varied collection later grew the museum, libraries, and archive. That is why the Wallraf-Richartz is better understood not as a single gallery with a smooth history, but as a place where the city gradually sorted its heritage into separate institutions.

The main significance of the museum today is connected with Cologne’s medieval painting. The text emphasizes that no other city has preserved such a large collection of medieval paintings: Cologne avoided major fires and iconoclasts, while Wallraf collected altarpieces during secularization. This fact changes the way one sees the exhibition: before the visitor are not merely old panels with religious scenes, but a rare surviving cross-section of an urban artistic milieu.

What to notice first

First it makes sense to notice the building itself: a cube between the town hall and the Gürzenich, designed by Oswald Mathias Ungers. Its simple form matters not in itself, but as the museum’s final stop after several moves and the loss of its former building in the Second World War. The old museum site was taken over by the 1956 building that now houses the Museum of Applied Arts, so the institution’s history can be read through its changing addresses and shells.

Inside, the key contrast is created by painting and works on paper. The paintings draw the eye toward the Cologne school and the altarpieces that Wallraf saved for the city collection. The graphic holdings reveal another side of the museum: miniatures on parchment, drawings on paper and cardboard, sketch albums, and printed graphics show not only finished images, but also more fragile forms of working with line and material. Another detail is tied to the location: the new building stands roughly where the workshop of Stefan Lochner, one of the masters of the Cologne school, once stood.