Neue Pinakothek
The Neue Pinakothek (, "New Pinacotheca") is an art museum in Munich, Germany. Its focus is European Art of the 18th and 19th centuries, and it is one of the most important museums of art of the nineteenth century in the world. Together with the Alte Pinakothek and the Pinakothek der Moderne, it is part of Munich's "Kunstareal" (the "art area"). The building. The museum was founded by King Ludwig I of Bavaria in 1853. The original building constructed by Friedrich von Gärtner and August von Voit was destroyed during World War II. The ruin of the Neue  Pinakothek was demolished in 1949. The building was replaced in the late 20th century. Designed by architect , the new postmodern building opened in 1981. Its features include arched windows, keystones, bay windows and stairways. It combines a concrete construction with a stone facade design. History. Ludwig began to collect contemporary art already as crown prince in 1809 and his collection was steadily enlarged. When the museum was founded, the separation to the old masters in the Alte Pinakothek was fixed with the period shortly before the turn of the 19th century, which has become a prototype for many galleries. Owing  to the personal preference of Ludwig I, the museum initially had a strong focus on paintings of German Romanticism and the Munich School. Also dynastic considerations played a role, as Greece had become a secundogeniture of Bavaria in 1832. In 1834 Carl Rottmann travelled to Greece to prepare for a commission from Ludwig for a cycle of great Greek landscapes. These works were installed in the Neue Pinakothek, where the paintings were given their own hall. The so-called Tschudi Contribution between 1905 and 1914 brought the Pinokathek an extraordinary collection of masterpieces of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. Hugo von  Tschudi was dismissed by Kaiser Wilhelm as a penalty for his bringing Gauguin's "The Birth of Christ" into the National Gallery in Berlin. He became the director of the Pinokathek. As general director of the State Collections, Tschudi acquired 44 paintings, nine sculptures, and 22 drawings, mostly from emerging French artists. Since public funds could not be used to purchase these works, Tschudi’s associates raised the money from private contributions after his death in 1911. The delimitation to the modern painters displayed in the Pinakothek der Moderne was later fixed by taking the career of Henri Matisse and  the Expressionists into account (ca. 1900). Consequentially a painting of Matisse acquired by the "Tschudi Contribution" is now displayed in the Pinakothek der Moderne. In 1915, the Neue Pinakothek became the property of the Bavarian state. In 1938 the national Nazi regime under Adolf Hitler confiscated a self-portrait of Vincent van Gogh, classifying it as degenerate art, and sold it a year later. Collection. The museum is under supervision of the Bavarian State Painting Collections, which houses an expanded collection of more than 3.000 European paintings from classicism to art nouveau. About 400 paintings and 50 sculptures of these  are exhibited in the New Pinakothek.