EVA BRANSCOME Hans Hollein’s Masterpiece: Art, Architecture and the City

The comprehensive study by the Austrian-American architectural historian Eva Branscome on the conceptual and architectural history of the Museum Abteiberg has recently been published by Lund Humphries, London. Branscome's publication was funded by the Gerda-Henkel-Stiftung and is based on her research in the archives of Hans Hollein and Museum Abteiberg, as well as her in-depth cultural and historical reflection on early postmodernism.

Opening in 1982, the Museum Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach was instantly lauded for its integration into the cityscape and resulted in architect-artist Hans Hollein being awarded the 1985 Pritzker Prize. This book re-assesses this influential building which became a place of art and architectural pilgrimage. The book also explores the role of museums as ‘cultural hinges’
whose architecture and artworks connect them to their surrounding city. Discussing a range of exhibitions including those by Joseph Beuys and Daniel Buren, it examines innovative ideas about curating contemporary art – rejecting, for example, the traditional concept of the enfilade, where one room leads on to the next – and how a museum's building and collection
should reflect the city and community surrounding it. Many of the ideas that were first realised in this building transformed museum architecture at the time and still challenge museum practice today.