With its ArtWorlds exhibition, multi-disciplinary institution Landesmuseum Hannover has now revitalised its WorldMuseum concept.

The historic interior of this landmark building has been extensively refurbished to enhance the quality of the surroundings. While a new lighting concept with innovative skylights provides a more pleasant atmosphere, a newly developed colour scheme – which assigns a specific colour to each room – brings out the best in the artworks without competing with the colours of the paintings.

The side display cases have been removed, restoring the rooms to their original grandeur. This made it necessary to create new surfaces for hanging paintings, which we designed as large partition walls that can be repositioned as needed.

The freshly renovated rooms of the listed building provide a fitting setting for presenting works of art by both modern and classical masters. The exhibition opens with one of the most important collections from the Middle Ages, featuring works like the Barefoot Altar and the Golden Panel. This is followed by Renaissance masterpieces, including pieces by Tilman Riemenschneider and Sandro Botticelli, paintings from the Italian Baroque period and the Dutch masters, and finally the New Masters collection with creations by Caspar David Friedrich, Claude Monet, Auguste Rodin and Paula Modersohn-Becker.

The tour concludes with paintings from the German Impressionist movement by Max Liebermann, Max Slevogt and Lovis Corinth. Individual interventions invite visitors to discover how objects from the ethnological and natural history departments relate to the art collection.

A key room in the exhibition tour – the CollectionHistories – takes a critical look at the provenance of the works. Over 60 paintings are displayed on a large metal storage rack, and their tumultuous past – often dating back to the dark days of Nazism and colonialism – can be read about at a media station.

KidsDiscoveryWorld

Younger visitors will find a child-friendly exhibition in the KidsDiscoveryWorld. The exhibition answers questions such as: What is art? What is paint made of?And what do the people who work in a museum do?

There are plenty of hands-on stations where they can have fun exploring, interacting and going on deep dives: What does the sea smell like in Karl Hagemeister’s painting “The Wave”? Is an image created by AI actually art? And, at the listening station, what is the story behind the painting “The Feasting Company”?

Sketched illustrations guide the children through the exhibition while visual elements drawn from the entire museum set the scene – in an exciting walk-through experience, they get the chance to discover the many facets of art with all their senses.

Rotunda

A new meeting place in the rotunda invites visitors to linger, with comfortable seating and well-stocked bookshelves. In the WorldsRoom, visitors can experience a 360-degree projection that immerses them in the various exhibition worlds.

Photos: Stefan Schilling