MMK (Museum für Moderne Kunst – Museum of Modern Art), Frankfurt

Frankfurt’s MMK is a modern art museum which is somehow more about the architecture than the art itself. Nonetheless a good option to visit with interesting programming across multiple sites.

MMK, Museum für Moderne Kunst

On my recent guide on a daytrip to Frankfurt, I advised readers to consider visiting one to two museums, depending on the weather and their interests. For once I followed my own advice! (To see what happens when I don’t and things get out of hand, read about another trip to Germany here). On previous visits to Frankfurt I had seen the Staedel Museum and Frankfurt Historical Museum. This time around, I selected the MMK, or the Museum für Moderne Kunst (Museum of Modern Art).

To be more specific, I visited the main site of the MMK. There are three. A purpose-built, Postmodern museum. Across the street, an outpost of the museum in a former custom house building (Zollamt). And in the financial district, another outpost in one of the shiny new towers, the Taunus Turm (Tower). Because it’s a modern art museum, they distinguish the sites using trendy branding like this:

Not unusually for this sort of setup, the MMK sell bundled tickets. I don’t remember the ins and outs of it exactly, but there wasn’t an option to buy a ticket for the main museum only. I believe we also had a ticket for the Zollamt, but didn’t use it as it was a lovely day and we had other things to do. So on this occasion, the attempt to make me add on a visit to an extra site was unsuccessful. But I understand why they do it: increased revenue but also encouraging visitors to the locations with less footfall.

But anyway, we’re not here to talk about ticketing strategy, we’re here for the museum. Let’s learn a little more about it now.

The MMK – A Short History

Frankfurt’s Museum of Modern Art opened in 1991. The idea had been evolving for a little over a decade before that. Frankfurt was already pretty well served for art: the Staedel Museum is one of the most important art museums in Germany, with an enormous collection and 200+ years of history. Its remit is broad, though: more than 700 years of art. A museum with a focus on modern art is something else again. Let’s leave the question of modern vs. contemporary art alone for a bit.

The idea to create a modern art museum for Frankfurt was the brainchild of Peter Iden, a theatre and art critic at the Frankfurter Rundschau. He found some political supporters, and became the museum’s first director when it was still in the ideas phase (1980-87). Swiss curator and art historian Jean-Christophe Ammann saw the project through to opening and beyond. But we’re a little ahead of ourselves. What about a building?

The competition to commission an architect for the MMK took place in 1983. Hans Hollein, who had previously placed second in another Frankfurt museum competition, was the winner. Building started in 1987, and was completed in 1991. Hollein was working with a triangular plot and so designed a wedge-shaped building, each floor coming to a point. The museum has about 3,500 square metres of exhibition space (the Staedel Museum has about 15,000 by comparison). And the style is very firmly Postmodern.

The core of the collection is the former private collection of Karl Ströher: 87 works of Pop Art and Minimalism. Peter Iden added works from the 1970s and 1980s to the collection, and Jean-Christophe Ammann continued to expand it. Today the MMK has more than 5,000 works from the 1960s to the present. The current director is Susanne Pfeffer.

Art Competes With Architecture

The exhibition, when I visited the MMK, was There is no There, There. It comprised works by artists from abroad working in East and West Germany during the 1960s-1980s, and showed the ways in which their work incorporated traditions and memories from their homelands, as well as overcoming exclusion and marginalisation to expand the country’s discourse and art scene. Given some of the current tensions in Germany (and elsewhere) over migration, a timely exhibition indeed.

I found, however, that the art is in constant competition with the architecture at the MMK. The artworks are given generous space, sometimes to the point where they feel swamped by the high ceilings of most rooms. And Hollein’s design is very far from being a ‘white cube’ of a gallery. There are bright colours, little spaces you can peer out of or along to see other levels, unexpected twists and turns, and so on. Not to say that any museum (or architecture) is neutral: Neoclassical museums operate as ‘temples’ to ‘high’ art, sending us subconscious messages about value and belonging. We learned a lot about Tropical Modernism recently and how it was coopted for both colonial and decolonial agendas, including in the construction of cultural institutions. So perhaps the difference here is how visibly and confidently the fabric of the museum is constantly asserting itself.

In hindsight, I can see how strongly this comes across in the images I took at the MMK. I favoured the strong lines and shapes of the building rather than centring the art. And no wonder, really: you can see how small some of the works appear to be against their big backdrops. Perhaps having more of the permanent collection out and staging a second exhibition would have meant less empty space and helped the artworks to hold their own a little more?

Final Thoughts

That is not to say that I didn’t enjoy the exhibition. The accompanying booklet gave each artist’s biography, and makes for interesting reading. I enjoyed getting to know new (to me) artists like Akbar Behkalam, MARWAN and Riza Topal. Manuela Sambo’s large masks are some of the few contributions to hold their own against the striking architecture. But what I really loved, and also learned the most from, were the documentary films. As an outsider myself in Germany, although not living or working there, the films selected by curators Gürsoy Doğtaş and Susanne Pfeffer taught me important aspects about the Germany (or Germanies, in fact) these artists encountered.

First up was Želimir Žilnik’s Hausordnung (House Orders, 1975). Žilnik interviews a group of guest workers in Munich about their living conditions (accommodation was tied to and provided by employers). His and their ambivalence about their adopted country led to the artist being denied further residency in West Germany and returning to Yugoslavia in 1977. Then there’s Navina Sundaram’s Binationale Ehen (Binational Marriages – 1982), in which she interviews interracial couples about their experiences. Although this issue has not disappeared today, it’s shocking how openly they were harrassed, and how ideas of national purity persisted after the National Socialist era.

And finally there was Chetna Vora’s OYOYO (1980). This film more than the others reveals a disappeared world, as she films fellow students in an international dormitory in East Germany. Foreign students can still be found forming friendships and learning about each other, but the specific elements of socialist utopianism and disillusionment are fascinating. It’s really a shame this filmmaker died so young (in 1987).

So there we go. I talked a lot about the art competing with the architecture, and yet it’s the art that I spoke most passionately about in the end. Perhaps it’s alright after all. The curation and programming is certainly interesting enough to warrant the MMK being a choice for a short trip to Frankfurt’s busy museum scene. And on a return visit I may even get to one or both of the other sites. Let me know in the comments if you have recommendations for one over the other!

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 3.5/5