Since August 3, the people of Cologne have been deprived of the Wallraf-Richartz Museum. The museum is planning two years of work to allow the complete renovation of the current building and to build an extension intended to exhibit its impressionist and neo-impressionist collections, received in 2001 in the form of a permanent loan from the Corboud Foundation. The reopening is planned for the end of 2028.
The extension, entrusted to the Swiss architectural firm Christ & Gantenbein, will be connected to the building designed by Oswald Mathias Ungers by an underground passage. Supported by the city of Cologne, the museum’s patrons’ circle (“Stifterrat”) and the Corboud Foundation, the project will expand the existing exhibition spaces by 1,000 m2, spread over three levels. The budget for the operation including the extension and the new adjacent administrative areas reaches 130 million euros. The renovation of the historic museum building is the subject of a separate budget of around 30 million.
Renowned for its remarkable collection of medieval art, containing masterpieces by Albrecht Dürer, anonymous masters of the Cologne School and Stefan Lochner, the museum also houses one of the largest painting galleries in Germany. Its collections contain Baroque masterpieces, such as Juno and Argus (1610) by Rubens, which depicts the episode of Ovid’s Metamorphosesor the Saint Paul the Hermit (1647) by Ribera. In the future extension of the museum, visitors will be able to discover the history of Impressionism from its roots to its later expressions, from Cézanne to Signac.
The collections of the Wallraf-Richartz Museum were originally housed in the building which today houses the Ludwig Museum. In 1994, Peter and Irene Ludwig donated their Picasso collection to the City, on the condition that the historic building be entirely dedicated to 20th and 21st century art, and that another enclosure be built to house the rest of the collections. This is how the Wallraf-Richartz was born, inaugurated in 2001 in the old town. The same year, he was entrusted with more than 170 paintings by Gérard and Marisol Corboud, which can be exhibited in brand new spaces by 2028.
