Starting with Rodin, one can take an unbroken walk through the history of modern sculpture here, through all phases and epochs, from Bosslet to Beuys and Hermann Blumenthal, from Archipenko, Lipchitz, Rodtschenko, Giacometti, Merz, Kounellis, Boltanski, Kricke, Heerich, Moore, Serra, Oldenburg, Gabo, Pevsner, Picasso and Dalí to Max Ernst. And of course: Wilhelm Lehmbruck, who was born in 1881 in today's Duisburg district of Meiderich.
The history of the house dates back to 1905, when citizens of the city founded an association for the purpose of establishing a museum. In 1924, the first collection and exhibition spaces were created to present acquired works by Lehmbruck, Maillol, Minne, Barlach, Kollwitz, Kogan, and others. In the 1950s, the second construction phase of the Duisburg Art Museum began. The collection was expanded with exemplary works of international sculpture, but also of painting.
In 1964, the new museum building designed by the son of the sculptor who passed away in 1919, Manfred Lehmbruck, was opened in the Kant Park; in 1987 it was significantly enlarged – a concrete-glass architecture with a seemingly floating roof, partially sunk into the ground. In 2000, the museum was converted into a foundation, in which the city, as well as the Chamber of Commerce and the Landscape Association of Rhineland, are involved.
