Nacht der Museen

Night of the Museums. Last night all the Museums and a few Galleries opened their doors from 1900-0300 to the city. For an 11Euro ticket, you had entrance into every Museum open and access to a free shuttle bus.

I started out here in Offenbach with three Museums right by me - the new City History Museum, Klingspor Museum (a museum dedicated to books and font/typeface design), and the Leder (Leather) Museum. The first showed little models of how the city looked in the 1800's - very interesting. The abandoned/graffiti'd bath house behind me used to be directly on the river - it's now about a kilometer away. Also old letters, Offenbach currency, oil paintings, and pre-historic artifacts found in the area.

The Klingspor Museum had an exhibit of work done by the NYC design firm Pentagram. Very nice, co-hesive designs. Not much else to be said here.

The Leder Museum was interesting. Half the museum is a shoe museum. Everything from peasant sandals to high-brow high heels and boots, all from the last two hundred years or so. Plus much art work done in leather. I got tired of it after awhile and moved on.

While waiting for the next shuttle bus, I learned that there was an exhibit at Museum fuer Angewandte Kunst about the Kinder Ueberraschung Ei (Kinder Surprise Eggs). Apparently the Egg turns 30 this year! The exibit was full of little yellow eggs and collections of the various series, a few toy conceptional drawings, models for the toys, and assembly line pieces. It was neat to see everybody looking at the toys and saying "Oh, I have that one" or "They used to make more of these kind when I was a kid".

After the Egg exhibit, I wandered down to the next museum on my list. To get to it though, I had to pass by the Museum fuer Kommunikation. The Deutsche Post is either a big sponsor of or the founder of this museum. They had people outside handing out postcards, stamps, pens, and key chain necklaces. They also had a booth set up to accept the postcards for mailing. So I used my postcard and stamp to mail a quick note to my parents.

On to the Staedel Museum. This is the museum Bill and I went to for the Art after Work event. They had their usual paintings (a few Degas's, Renior's, Monet's, etc), a photography exhibit, and a special painting exhibit. I looked around a bit and then decided that was the end of my night. So I waited around for my bus (it took forever to arrive, and was packed) and got home around 2am.

All around a good evening.

Posted by Jinglelady at April 25, 2004 02:31 PM | German Life