I visited an exhibition featuring treasures from the Osthaus Museum, Hagen, Germany

 

 At the Osthaus Museum Hagen 

founded 1902 by Karl Ernst Osthaus inside the Villa Folkwang

the museum exhibits its hidden treasures.

  

Fountain in the entrance hall of the historic villa

Sitzende, 1911/1912 

Seated Figure, by Alexander Archipenko, Ukraine (1887-1964)

The plaster model bought from a collector in  Düsseldorf; 

bronze casting authorized by the artist himself in 1956

 

Death and alive, 2002 by Micha Brendel.

Display case of glass, 12 filled cylinders, purchased from the artist

 

Death and alive are so-called Cryonicists, giving their bodies to be deepfrozen. Their hopes are to be brought back to life once there are cures for their illnesses. The display shall help those people to remember their past life. The artist questions the sense of being immortal.

 

 

Gene Pool (1992), given as a present by Dui Seid

 Dui Seid is the first American artist to address AIDS and human frailty.

 

 

White Field, 1964 - by Günter Uecker (1930-10.6.2025)

Kinetic art - even if the art doesn't move, but the viewer of art

 

Hans-Herrmann, 1974 - by Uwe Nickel (*1942)

Acrylic on canvas, purchased from the artist in 1974

 

On top: Shipboard, 1963 - Offset Lithography, purchsed from a gallery in 1968 

below:  Sunrise, 1965 (dto.)

Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) was an American pop artist. He rose to prominence in the 1960s through pieces which were inspired by popular advertising and the comic book style. Much of his work explores the relationship between fine art, advertising, and consumerism.

 

Liz, 1964 - by Andy Warhol (1928-1987)

Silkscreen, purchased from a gallery in 1968

 

Picture XD 1949, 1949 - by Fritz Levedag (1899-1951)

Oil on canvas, purchased from the artist's estate

 

Composition, 1922/23 by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Oil on canvas

 Donation from the Donors' Association in 1953

 

Rot Gegeneinander, 1928 - by Oskar Schlemmer (1988-1943)

Oil and Tempera on Canvas

  Donation from the Donors' Association in 1958

 

Small Worlds X, 1922 - by Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)

Drypoint etching

Purchased in the art trade in  1952

 

Inkpot, silver and glass, 1909 - by Henry van de Velde (1853-1957)

Purchased from the Estate Erika Schulenburg, 2000

 

 

Everyday Art

Since ages there's an ashtray in front of the glass entrance. Once you pay to enter the exhibition, you receive a sticky, coloured dot which may be attached to your clothes. When people leave the museum it seems to be a common gesture to stick the coloured dot to the ashtray. And this mostly ugly thing turns into a coloured piece of art created by a thousand (and more) people.

 

In fact I don't know if the ever replace or remove the dots, but whenever I am at the museum the dots seem to explode over the whole ashtray. 

 

This is the same ashtray in February 2020 - just before Covid-19 rushed in.... 

 

 

I visited the Maxipark in Hamm, Germany - and hundreds of butterflies

 The Maximilian Park is an amusement park in Northrhine Westfalia, Germany. It follows the Regional Garden Show which has been built on the area of a black coal mine in 1984.

The landmark is a huge building that looks like an elephant

 

 

Inside the large park is a building with butterflies, hundreds of butterflies

 

 

I visited an exhibition in Hagen again :-)

 On the 2nd September I needed to see art - whatever it takes. I took my car and drove to Hagen and visited the Osthaus Museum. Here we go:

The Karl Ernst Osthaus-Museum is an art museum in Hagen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The center of the museum is a building whose interior was designed by Henry van de Velde to house Karl Ernst Osthaus' art collection, open to the public as the Museum Folkwang. When Osthaus' heirs sold his art collection to the city of Essen, the city of Hagen gained possession of the empty museum building. For a time it served as offices for the local electric company. 

 After World War II, the new director of Hagen's city art museum, Herta Hesse, oversaw the restoration of the old Folkwang building into a new home for Hagen's art museum. Although the original interior design was lost due to reconstruction and World War II bombings, the interior has been restored several times and gives a reasonable approximation of Osthaus' original museum,

Elevator to the 4th floor

just enjoy the wonderful chandelier and a painting by Laszlos Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946)

"Composition"

 

These two painting faszinated me most this time:

"Acrobats" by Max Pechstein (1881-1955)

"View from Haut-Cagnes to the sea, after 1903"

by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)

Two artists were on display and their work of art couldn't be richer in contrast:

 

Monika Kus-Picco, born 1973 in Vienna, is an artist, photographer and sculptor.

Her exhibits show medical products, ingredrients of various expired pills transferred on large canvases.

 

Hunt Slonem, born 1951 in Kittery, Maine. He is an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker and he loves parrots, bunnies and toucans in rows

We visited an exhibition in Dortmund

 Last sunday we drove to the very heart of Dortmund to visit the natural history museum.

The teacher Prof. Edgar Weiner was responsible for the natural scientific collection. The collection grew ongoingly. 1887 he asked the natural scientific society to found a museum for the city of Dortmund. The city bought a building at the Victoria Street 25 and Weinert was appointed chairman and first director.

1934 the exhebition grew largely and the city bought a much bigger building at the Balkenstraße. Unfortunately WWII destroyed 90% of the inventory, but it was in 1953 that the inventory grew again to its before-war-status. 1980 the museum moved to Fredenbaum and it was the main goal to show plants and animals from the region of the Ruhrpott, Sauerland, Siegerland and Münsterland. Today, after a six-year restauration, the museum reopened in 2020 during the pandemic. Let's see what they have on display, especially mineralogy, paleontology and meteorites...

before entering the museum we passed a small park with various stones and rootage as well as a mine head frame

It is from the closed "Lüderich"-mine (on duty from 1907-1979) which discharged lead and zinc.

 

Let's go inside

 

Comparison of eggs: left = Ostrich Struthio camelus, egg = 1,9 kg

middle = common chiffchaff Phylloscopus collybita , egg = 15mm long

right = elephant bird Aepyornis maximus, Madagascar, extinct - egg = 31cm long, contains 9 litres

Aldabrachelys gigantea

The 117-kg-Turtle from the Seychelles lived in the Zoo of Dortmund and died 1986. These turtles may live for 250 years!

Tropidolaemus laticinctus

This preserved broadbended temple viper was stored in the museums' collection for 206 years before it was identified by Kuch, Ulrich, Gumprecht & Melaun as a new species in 2007

The tiger is on display with various bags and artifacts to show which parts of this wonderful animal are  used for "special medicine"

The lion has been given for permanent loan by the customs of Gießen (near Frankfurt) to show that this special species is endangered to end up as a trophy by hunters. I really condemn this!

. The North Island Giant Moa (Dinornis novaezealandiae) was about 3,6m high and wheighed about 230 kg.. New Zealand had been isolated for 80 million years and had few predators before human arrival. Polynesians arrived sometime before 1300, and all Moa were soon hunted. By 1445 all Moa had become extinct. 

 

************

 

 

 Redwood Tree Sequoia ** This perfect preserved slice of the tree wheighs 500 kg

Miocene (23,03-5,3 million years ago)

Oregon, USA 

Petrified wood  Araucarioxylon arizonicum

Triassic (251,9-201,3 mya)

Arizona, USA

 

 Palaeontology:

Dapedium punctatus

 Osteolepsis

Rhizostomites (fossil Jellyfish)

Keichosaurus hui (China)

Seirocrinus subangularis

Plesiotheutis prisca

 Archaeopteryx lithographica

(Cast taken from an original fossil at Eichstätt, Germany)

might have looked like this?

 

Mesolimulus walchi (Horseshoe crab)

Solnhofen limestone, Bavaria

 

 

Balteurypterus tetragonophthalmus (Sea Scorpion)

 Silurian period (432-418 mya)

Southwestern Ukraine

 Bronce cast of a male and female Mammuthus primigenius (Woolly mammoth) 

Scale 1:10

 

 

Mineralogy

 

Druse with agate and amethyst

Sometimes bubbles of gas occur in solidified lava and - with enough time passing by - minerals grow inside the void volume.

Gold with quartz,Moliagul = southwestern Australia

pure sulfur, Italy

 cubic pyrite, Huanzalá, Peru

 

 Garnet (german: Almandin) on mica slate , Ötztal, Tyrol, Austria

 

Opale with vivid colours, Nevada, USA

 

Mirabeau diamond (mountain crystal) in a chalk concretion

Rémuzat, France

 

Opale from Australia

Atacamite is a comparatively rare mineral, formed from primary copper minerals in the oxidation zone of arid climates.

 

 Vanadinite on triplite, Marocco

 Celestite, Mahajanga, Madagascar

Aquamarine (blue beryl), Shengus, Pakistan

 

 Aquamarine on muscovite, Hunza valley, Pakistan

Rubies and sapphires from Kenia, Madagascar and Sri Lanka

 

Tourmaline is a gemstone and can be found in a wide variety of colors. It is a crystalline silicate mineral group in which boron is compounded with elements such as aluminium, iron, magnesium, sodium, lithium, or potassium.

Topaz (findspot unknown)

Kyanite is a typically blue aluminosilicate mineral, found in aluminium-rich metamorphic pegmatites and sedimentary rock.

 

 

Stibnite is a sulfide mineral

 

Crocoite is a mineral consisting of lead chromate

 

 pure Arsenic, Poland

and last, but not a least a giant mount chrystal in the center of the mineralogy cabinet

found 1973  in Jessieville, Arkansas, USA, bought from the museum in 1980

wheighs 400 kg

 Cosmology / meteorites

NWA (Northwest Africa) 2481, meteorite from the Asteroid "Vesta"

Stone meteorite, fragment, 67g

 "La Criolla" meteorite with metallic glow (comes from iron inside)

cut fragment, 52 g

on January 6, 1985 a fireball heralded the arrival of La Criolla

 

 "Imilac" - Stone and iron, typical "Pallasite"

polished slice, 121 g

found in the Atacama desert, Chile in 1822

>>  24° 12′ 46″ S, 68° 48′ 31″ W

 

"Toluca" - iron/nickel meteorite

cut and acid etched slice, 1,8 kg 

 you can see the so-called Widmannstätten-structures

found in Mexico in 1776

 

 

I hope you enjoyed our tour. There are much more things to see, but there has to be something left over for you to discover by yourself :-)