As of: March 7, 2024, 6:30 p.m
By: Michael Schleicher
Comments
Press
Split
On April 17, 2024, the State Archaeological Collection in Munich will open its doors again.
Now director Rupert Gebhard (left) showed Art Minister Markus Blume through the rooms.
© Jens Hartmann/Münchner Merkur
The State Archaeological Collection in Munich has been closed since 2016.
The museum will reopen on April 17, 2024.
We visited the completely renovated house.
And suddenly you're standing on bones with hacking and cutting marks.
Ham bones also protrude from the grayish pile of skeletons - once the offal from a butcher's shop in the Roman Empire, sometime in the first century AD.
The remains of our ancestors' meals were found in the area of the municipality of Langweid in the Augsburg district;
Now they lie under glass in the State Archaeological Collection at the English Garden.
When the completely renovated house at Lerchenfeldstraße 2 opens its doors to the public on April 17, 2024 (admission is free for the first week), visitors will be able to walk over all the bones and other objects - weapons, coins, Roman ceramics .
The people responsible, led by director Rupert Gebhard, have installed a double, glazed floor in one room, and excavation sites have been modeled underneath: you can get very close to the work of the archaeologists.
On April 17, 2024, the Munich State Archaeological Collection will reopen for the first time since 2016
The Museum of Prehistory and Early History has been closed since 2016;
In 2009, the state parliament cleared the way for the general renovation of the building from the 1970s.
When the house is reopened with a ceremony on April 15, 2024, the measures will have cost around 66 million euros.
On Thursday afternoon (March 7, 2024), Art Minister Markus Blume got a first impression of the concept and the rooms in which intensive work was carried out during his visit.
“It’s going to be really good,” the CSU politician is convinced.
Floor display cases (here with bones from slaughterhouse waste) give an impression of the excavation work.
© Jens Hartmann/Münchner Merkur
The core of the exhibitions in the future will be two tours, explains Gebhard.
The first focuses on the “archaeological adventure” and explains how it works, as well as the meaning and challenges of the profession.
There is, for example, a coffee service from the Café Deistler at Munich's Marienhof, which survived the Allied bombing in 1945 after being badly damaged: Is there already an archaeological interest here?
The second way to move through the house is to follow the trails of the extensive collection.
Thousands of objects from the “Prehistory”, “Roman Period”, “Middle Ages and Modern Times”, the “Mediterranean Collection” and “Numismatics” departments.
The highlight: In order to be able to tell the history of the very, very old pieces even more clearly, the makers are using a relatively young art form - compared to archaeological artifacts.
The Munich comic artist Frank Schmolke takes guests back in time in large picture stories.
During the tour yesterday, for example, his visualization of the discovery of a historic well in the ground beneath the Marienhof was shown.
At the bottom of this, the researchers discovered bones of a cow, and the name “Heidi” was then entered for the animal’s remains in the computer tomography file in Großhadern.
This is just a footnote to show that science is anything but dry.
The facade made of Corten steel of the State Archaeological Collection shines in a fine rust red, which will be open to the public again from April 17, 2024.
© Jens Hartmann/Münchner Merkur
If the two tours are the heart of the completely upgraded state collection, then the room in the basement is the pacesetter of the house: these approximately 600 square meters were newly added in the course of the work.
Here, where the boxes from the depots are currently located, special exhibitions will be shown in the future.
The “Primal Forms” show about Ice Age art will be running at the start in autumn.
Of course, the new, old building not only goes down deep, but also up high: in the future there will be a café up on the roof terrace that will be open regardless of museum hours.
After all, Director Gebhard wants to be not just an archaeological center, but also a “cultural meeting place”.
Could work.