CAMBRIDGE, MA.- Today, Harvard’s Busch-Reisinger Museum will mark its 100th anniversary of collecting, studying, and presenting the art of German- speaking countries and the related cultures of Central and Northern Europe. Founded as the Germanic Museum by scholar Kuno Francke and currently the only U.S. museum devoted to promoting the appreciation of art from this area of the world from the Middle Ages to the present, the Museum grew out of Harvard’s commitment to the study of Germanic culture and a dedication to creating museums that are exceptional interdisciplinary resources. Today, the Busch-Reisinger Museum is distinguished by its collection, its unparalleled leadership in advancing the appreciation of Germanic art within the United States, and its role in shaping the development of scholars and leaders in the field.

The Museum’s deep and wide-ranging collection includes important holdings of Austrian Secession art, German expressionism, 1920s abstraction, and material related to the Bauhaus, including archives of Lyonel Feininger and Walter Gropius. The Museum’s holdings also encompass notable collections of late medieval, Renaissance, and baroque sculpture, 16th-century painting, and 18th-century porcelain. An intensive program of acquisition has resulted in a broad and strong representation of post-1945 German art, with particular strengths in drawings, prints, and photographs. The Busch-Reisinger’s collection of multiples by postwar artist Joseph Beuys is among the most comprehensive in the world.

"The Busch-Reisinger Museum’s impact on the study and appreciation of the art of German-speaking countries has been unmatched by any other U.S. museum," said Peter Nisbet, Daimler-Benz Curator of the Busch-Reisinger Museum. "Through its 100 years of vigorous collecting, teaching, and researching art of this culture, the Museum has built a foundation in the United States for the popular appreciation of German art. The Busch-Reisinger Museum has also played a seminal role in shaping the study of art history at Harvard, and, in turn, throughout the United States. It has been my great privilege to continue the pioneering traditions of this important institution."

Since 1983, the Museum’s scholarly and collecting activities have been directed by Nisbet in collaboration with the director of the Harvard University Art Museums. A European group of patrons supports the institution, a rare circumstance among art museums in the United States. Founded in Germany in 1983, the Friends of the Busch-Reisinger Museum (Verein der Freunde des Busch-Reisinger Müseums) now numbers over 240 members based in Germany as well as in Austria, Switzerland, and other countries. This dynamic, internationally focused group supports many facets of the Busch-Reisinger Museum, making possible an active exhibition and publication program, curatorial internships, and a wide range of important acquisitions.

Exhibitions, Teaching, and Research - In the past 20 years alone, the Museum has organized solo exhibitions of the work of contemporary artists such as Joseph Beuys, Günter Umberg, Hanne Darboven, and Anselm Kiefer as well as major national and international traveling exhibitions devoted to topics ranging from German drawings and watercolors of the age of Goethe to German realist drawings of the 1920s, and from works by El Lissitzky to East German art. Masterpieces from the Museum’s 20th-century collection have been presented at the National Gallery in Washington and in Germany at the Städel in Frankfurt, the Bauhaus-Archiv in Berlin, and the Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf.

The Museum’s exhibition program rests in part on research conducted by interns who work closely with senior scholars. As part of the Harvard Art Museums’ renowned curatorial internship program, the Busch-Reisinger Museum offers a 22-month internship annually, designated in alternate years for European nationals. The curatorial internship program provides a wide-ranging hands-on experience to prepare for professional and scholarly careers in art history, particularly at museums. Recent projects developed by Busch-Reisinger interns.

Birthday Presents - To celebrate the Museum’s 100th anniversary, generous friends and supporters have donated a rich selection of artworks, which will be published November in a catalogue entitled Birthday Presents. The collection includes major paintings such as Franz von Stuck’s Wounded Amazon (1905), an early landscape by Paula Modersohn-Becker, oils by Willi Baumeister and Oskar Schlemmer, and a 1960s abstract painting by Ernst Wilhelm Nay, and many other works.