The Museum für Angewandte Kunst Köln (German for "Museum of Applied Art"; MAKK) is a decorative arts museum in Cologne. The collections include jewellery, porcelain, furniture, weaponry and architectural exhibits. Until 1987 it was called the Kunstgewerbemuseum ("Decorative Art Museum").[1]
History
Statues of Johann Heinrich Richartz and Ferdinand Franz Wallraf in front of the museum (photomontage).
The city of Cologne decided to found an applied art museum in 1888. The core of the exhibition originally came from the collections of Ferdinand Franz Wallraf (1748–1824) and Matthias Joseph de Noël (1782–1849), and the exhibition was soon expanded through endowments. The museum's original location was a Neo-Gothic building on the Hansaring, built in 1900, but this was destroyed by bombs in 1943.[1][2]
Since 1989 the museum has had a permanent home in the former building of the Wallraf-Richartz and Ludwig Museums at An-der-Rechtschule, built by Rudolf Schwarz and Josef Bernhard between 1953 and 1957.[1][2]
Building
The plain, red-brick Schwarz-Bernhard building stands on the site of a former Conventual monastery, whose shape is still traced by the ground plan and the square inner courtyard. The late-Gothic Minoritenkirche on the south side still survives. The inner courtyard wall on the north side has been almost entirely glazed, acting as a "shop window" for the museum. A low, modest antechamber leads into the museum's very large entrance hall and central staircase.
Collections
The museum has a large collection (over 100,000 items)[3] of European applied art from the 10th century to the present. This is arranged chronologically by era, and includes furniture, decorative carpets, small sculptures, dining utensils, luxury items, and decorative objects. For the sake of preservation, the textile collection is mostly displayed only in short-term special exhibitions.[3]
