ART HOUSES.(Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany - museum design/architecture)(Critical Essay)

The new Pinakothek der Moderne, in Munich, is a museum that has been strenuously designed for looking at art. This makes it unusual among recently built museums, where what is on display often feels incidental to symbolic functions of the sort that churches and government buildings once fulfilled. Munich's new showcase for modern art, which opened in September, next door to the Alte and Neue Pinakotheks of Old Master and nineteenth-century works, completes one of the world's most remarkable museum complexes. It houses a pretty good painting collection, which is strongest in German Expressionists and Max Beckmann, and has superb holdings in drawing, design, and ...