While thousands of years of accumulation are stored in a museum’s vaults, what kind of experience does it create to liberate these objects from the constraints of traditional classifications such as material, color, or chronology and display them? The Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt am Main pursues this very question with its permanent exhibition “Elementarteile. Aus den Sammlungen” (Elementary Parts: From the Collections), open to visitors since 2013.
Curated under the leadership of museum director Prof. Matthias Wagner K, with museum curators such as Dr. Eva Linhart, Prof. Dr. Klaus Klemp, Dr. Mahret Kupka, Dr. Sabine Runde, Dr. Stephan von der Schulenburg, and Grit Weber alongside members of the Frankfurt Kunstgewerbeverein selecting their personal favorites, this space spans an immense period of approximately 5,000 years. Ranging from East Asian crafts to Islamic art, and graphic design to book arts, this rich and heterogeneous collection opens objects to the viewer’s own associations as singular, autonomous, and simple “elementary parts,” rather than placing them in a chronological sequence.
Expanding over time through new donations and acquisitions, very special stories stand out in the exhibition space recently. One of these is a rare tablecloth hand-drawn upon by The Beatles and Joan Baez during their last joint concert at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park on August 29, 1966. Another is the legendary “Frankfurter Küche” (Frankfurt Kitchen), designed by architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, considered the pioneer of modern fitted kitchen design, which has been incorporated into the collection following its restoration. Additionally, as part of its provenance research ongoing since 2016, the museum places 15 special objects from the Ottmar Strauss collection at the center of this selection with historical responsibility, in line with its project investigating Nazi-era unlawful seizures.
