Munich is a lot. Three stand out as the most thrilling experiences–we were able to go from room to room in a state of delight. Peak art museum.

We had so much fun simply staring at paintings and sculpture we had never seen in books, in a special exhibition, never anywhere. And wows as a percentage I would put at 30%, off my personal experience charts. I cannot stop thinking about the wows. Thank you, Janina, for your guidance. The city has so much and you helped us prioritize.

Love of art and fascination with the artistic mind are mysterious preoccupations for me, a not-artist. I am not a skillful enough writer to use words that would convey even a bit of the awe I felt.

Our top three, and what we loved about them:

Stadtische Galeries im Lenbachhaus

I had heard of the Blue Rider school but knew nothing about it. I assumed I’ have’d seen examples simply because of all the art museums we have visited. Wrong again.

The museum itself is in a lovely space. The early Kandinsky’s, as well as Gabrielle Munter and August Macke, blew my mind. Icing on the cake–so to speak–is the excellent museum cafe that we returned to for a second lunch a few days later.

The link below is to an online selection of the Blue Rider collection.

https://www.lenbachhaus.de/en/digital/collection-online/collection/the-blue-rider

My favorites, not at the link:

Pinakothek der Moderne

Turns out there are three Pinakothek museums, and we went to two of them…and “der Moderne” was a revelation. Big, tall galleries, each with a theme that is explained on a poster as you enter; mixed media, paintings, video, posters, sculpture, mixed into the theme in eye-popping ways. The building itself is tall, wide, with an enormous lobby full of fun kinetic seating that was well-exercised by the many kids of all ages. Note: Seems in Europe there is much more expectation and tolerance of small children in art spaces, which was great in our opinion. Get your kids to a museum!

This museum is best known for its industrial design collection, but frankly we were so overwhelmed with the other galleries we decided to skip that floor and head over to Alte Pinakothek across the street which was great but missed being in our top three. The competition was tough.

Glyptothek

We are Roman and Greek history and mythology nerds, so when we mentioned our interest in this museum to Janina and she told us how much she loved it we put on the must-visit list.

First, the building itself is impressive, with tall, domed, coffered ceilings, giant windows, and plenty of room between items to wander and circle them. We noticed everywhere in Europe the art is rarely behind glass or in cases–you can get right up close and really see the work. For these ancient sculptures this made our viewing experience feel personal–you can walk around a piece, no barriers, and it frankly was hard not to reach out and touch them (we did NOT).

The phone app they offer added so much to our understanding of what we were looking at, as did the posters in each room explaining why certain pieces were displayed together and what they represented. There was too much to absorb in one visit. And every now and then, a gasp–as in the room where a bigger than life size Apollo looks down on us mortals and even in his purely arts-patron guise is freaking powerful and impressive.

I told David I felt as if I’d just completed a masters in classical sculpture by osmosis.

After Glyptothek we went back to Lenbachhaus for another great lunch, and then across the park to the sister museum filled with Greek and Roman ceramics. I’ve seen a lot of it over the years but never, ever such amazing examples.

Runner-up, Bavarian History

In addition to the Staatliche Antikensammlung (sister to Glyptotek) and the second Pinokothek museum we managed to get to one history museum, the Bavarian National Museum.

It’s a wow, of course, but with a bit of the Victoria and Albert Museum (London) flavor. Why have just oh, five or so cases of ivory sculptures when you could have an enormous room of them? Why have just a few select examples of nativity figures when you can have eight or nine rooms of them? Just how many suites of armor can one admire? So there’s that aspect of this enormous place–but also some truly gaspingly beautiful wooden sculptures as well as enormous models of Munich and a few other places. We were admiring these as we have in other museums when I noticed in the descriptive sign these were not, as we assumed, modern or at least 20th century models–they were from the 1500’s. Very, very cool. I’ve put the link below because it was impossible to get a decent photo.

https://www.bayerisches-nationalmuseum.de/en/collection/highlights/00140705