MUNICH: ART SCENE

Munich boasts numerous museums, and for us, traveling is all about art and architecture. I always relish the opportunity to see both old and new masters, especially pieces we haven't encountered before. Fortunately, Munich managed to protect its art during the war. We visited the Alte Pinakothek, which houses a vast and significant collection of old masters and contemporary art. Highlights included works by Rembrandt, van Gogh, da Vinci, Raphael, Botticelli, Lippi, El Greco, Rubens, Titian, Tintoretto, Bosch, Dürer, Cézanne, Gauguin, Monet, Rodin, Manet, Gainsborough, Poussin, van Dyck, Bruegel, Turner, Klimt, and many others.

We spent several hours exploring the galleries and absorbing everything. We also visited the Pinakothek der Moderne, their modern art museum, and after viewing the masters, we appreciated works by Max Beckmann, Picasso, Bacon (always challenging to say "enjoyed"), Rauschenberg, Ernst, Warhol (my 15 minutes), Matisse, Klee, Kandinsky, Dali (consistently strange), Richter, and others I didn't know but found intriguing. Modern art following the old masters helps clear my mind a bit, as it is brighter and more contemporary in its themes.

We toured Lenbachhaus, famous for housing the Blue Rider collection, initiated by Kandinsky and his associates around 1911. Being an avid admirer of Kandinsky, I found the museum impressive, showcasing his early impressionist pieces and evolving into his later abstract expressionist works.  Outside the museum, there is a charming garden where we paused for a few minutes to enjoy the fountains, the birdsong, and ponder what the villa might have been like before it was transformed into a museum.

Another remarkable museum we visited was the Ägyptisches Kunstmuseum (the Egyptian Museum). During our time in Egypt, we noticed that many archaeological excavations were conducted by German teams, and they certainly didn't leave empty-handed. If you're an enthusiast of Egyptology, all I can say is "wow." The museum's architecture is perfectly executed. You descend into the museum as if entering one of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings, and from there, you move through various spaces resembling chambers within a tomb. The audio-visual support for the exhibits is user-friendly and engaging. I suspect that when The Great Egyptian Museum eventually opens in Cairo, it will likely have a more extensive collection, but it is unlikely to be as well-presented as this one.