The Saarland Museum with Moderne Galerie
During my exchange mobility at Hochschule der Bildeden Kunste Saar in the city of Saarbrucken, Germany, I have visited many art related institutions such as galleries or museums in the city or outside of it, but one that gave me a very good impression was The Saarland Museum with the Modern Gallery.
How is the museum configured?
Actually, the art museum was spread over three distinctive sites:
- Museum in the palace Church ( Museum in the Schlosskirche) with artworks dating from the Middle ages to the 19thcentury and located on Schlossberg street
- The Old Collection ( Alte Sammlung ) with artworks dating back to the period of 16thcentury to 19thcentury and located in Schlossplatz
- The Modern Gallery ( Moderne Galerie ) with art pieces starting from the 19thcentury until today and of which I am going to write in the following words because is the one which I have visited personally
Where is The Saarland Museum with the Moderne Galerie located and when it is open?
The museum’s building is located near the river Saar on Bismarck street and very close to the Saarlandisches Staatstheater and Park Am Theater. Opposite to this museum there is the Hochschule fur Musik Saar. From Tuesday to Sunday the museum is open from 10.00 am to 18.00 pm, an exception being made on Wednesday when it was open until 20.00 pm. On Monday it is closed.
The outside view of the museum
On the outside, the construction of The Saarland Museum seemes very harsh, austere, but still imposing with its very well defined geometrical shape and grey color. The space in front of it is quite large and makes everything around it clear and open, so the building will not be missed by the people who are searching for it or just passing by.
The attention to small details can be remarked on the outdoor floor where is written the name of the museum in many playful variations. In the left part, if you are watching the building from the Theather, there is positioned a big abstract like sculpture named “Great Gaia” that has simple shapes which also indicates the fact that there is an art museum around.
The entrance is kind of hidden and a bit hard to find if you are going there for the first time. Coming from the Theater, to the left is the sculpture, to enter the building you have to go right and then in front passing by the museum’s outside terrace.
My own experience in The Saarland Museum
I’ve been visiting the museum for three or four times during my Erasmus mobility in Saarbrucken and I always enjoyed it and found something interesting to stare at.
Seminar in the museum
The first time I went to the Modern Gallery was with my class and teacher of Atelier studio because we had a seminar focused on the works of Giuseppe Pennone, a famous Italian sculpture whose artworks I knew less at that time.
We looked around and then our teacher told us more aspects about his style and way of creating, but because I didn’t understood that much of the german language, it was a bit difficult to me to get involved into the conversation. A question that got stucked into my head was: “Is the artist relevant to our times?” My answer was “yes” because of his subject matter and way of representing ideas. He focused on themes that had to do with some of the natural phenomenons that are present generally in the environment, and for me his choice seemed to be forever valid.
As far as I understood, in the Modern Gallery part of the museum, there are organized temporary exhibitions by different artists and at that time Penone happened to be on display. Since the two ground floor rooms of the building had very high ceilings, Pennone had a plenty of space to exhibit large great sculptures.
The one that impressed me the most was made out of tall tree trunks hanging from the white simple walls. I was looking consistently up and down at it thinking about what the artist want to transmit to me. The atmosphere that I encountered put me in a state of meditation about the inner unknown phenomena and aspects that are naturally forming all the time in our world, but of which we know less about.
Pennone’s trunk trees were uncovering themselves in front of my eyes, so I could see how the trees had grown and developed with the passing time.
Besides that, I liked the fact that, due to the configuration of the rooms, Pennone’s site could be seen from many points of view: I could walk on the ground floor and see the works from down to up or I could walk the stairs and watch everything from the opposite perspective, from up to down. In the last case, I have to say that the experience was incredibly beautiful and really worth seeing, but because I had to take part in the course seminar I could not spend the time that I wanted to here and I put in my head the idea that for sure I had to get back to this place.
The permanent collection of same famous artists
When one of my friends visited me from Romania I went with her to the museum again and this time I got to see much more of the Saarland Museum and entered rooms with art collections that I didn’t knew about or didn’t expected at all to find here.
Besides the temporary collections, there were permanent collections too that contained artworks belonging to important painters or sculptors of the art world. I found works created by ones of my favorite painters, namely Max Ernst and Giorgio de Chirico. I was surprised in such of good way of the opportunity that I got to admire and see in details artists that I had been admiring so much since high school. Other significant artist’s names that I saw through the galleries were Pablo Picasso, Franz Marc and the American sculptor Alexander Archipenko.
Holes made into the museum's walls
Another time that I remember going to the Moderne Galerie was when one of the conceptual painting teachers from our university had an opening of a personal exhibition. The name of the artist is Katharina Hinsberg and the exhibition she had put on displayed was called “Interpunktionen”. A speech was hold in the ground floor followed by the actual act of seeing one of the museum’s room transformed completely by the artist: in the walls there were small holes given by Katharina in an aim of creating a continuous black drawing.
On the floor, in one corner of the room, there was an entire stack of big paper drawings which people could look through and see. Probably, these drawings were the preparatory images for the final aspect of the site specific artwork.
At this opening came many people that I knew because most of them were either students at HBK or teachers. So, I looked around and talked with the Erasmus students about how the small holes had been made into the walls so perfectly and clearly. Somehow, we found out that she had used a machine while working on this exhibition.
The drawing on the walls was pretty interesting experience for me because I had never seen something made like this before. From a distance I could not notice that the dark chalk strokes like lines were actually holes, but as I was getting closer to it, I could see how the big picture was created by hollowing the walls with various smaller or bigger holes. The whole aspect of the room gave me a feeling of a floating space due to the lines transparency and sinuosity.
After everybody enjoyed the room project, we went down the stairs in the entrance’s foyer where we were served with glasses of wine and traditional german pretzels. I sat with the Erasmus student at a table and we shared opinions about the exhibition and talked about many other things while drinking some wine and eating pretzels.
A museum worth seeing
The temporary exhibitions will not probably be on display for a longer time, but other artists will follow with their artworks for sure. If you are a student or just a visitor in Saarbrucken I recommend you to enter the Saarland Museum with the Modern Gallery and spend some time here going around all of the rooms.
