GRASSI museum complex

The GRASSI museum complex is one of the most popular cultural attractions in Leipzig and hosts three museums: the Museum of Applied Arts, the Museum Ethnography and the Museum of Musical Instruments. The Grassi museum complex is named after Franz Dominic Grassi, a banker and merchant, who donated the money for its construction in 1929.

The GRASSI Museum of Applied Arts:
Since being re-opened, the museum's new permanent exhibition is an invitation to travel through more than 2,500 years of art history. The highlights of the first tour "Antiquity to Historism" include the Roman hall, the Piranesi Gallery and, above all, a most valuable collection of Baroque art cabinet items. In the second exhibition area, "Asiatic Art. Impetus for Europe", a very particular fascination is exercised by a twelve-part Chinese carved lacquer screen from the Qing Dynasty and a selection of excellent Japanese Nô masks. It is planned to open the third and last tour, "Art Nouveau up to the Present Day", focusing on works from the 1920s and 1930s, at the end of 2011. With the exhibition floor space totalling some 5,000 square metres, the richness and variety of the museum's own collections can be experienced again for the first time since World War II. Other attractions besides the permanent exhibition are special exhibitions dedicated to a range of different topics and the Grassimesse held each year on the last weekend in October. The latter is an international sales fair for applied art and product design with a tradition stretching back to 1920. It provides a forum for around 100 vetted artistic craft workers, designers, artists and specialist universities to present and sell unique items, small-series and industrial products. A must for those interested in quality-conscious design.

The GRASSI Museum of Ethnography:
A tour through the rooms of the Museum für Völkerkunde in Leipzig is like a journey around the world. The art and everyday life of distant cultures enable visitors to get away from their own day-to-day concerns. In its newly designed rooms in the Grassimuseum at Johannisplatz, the museum shows items held in the Saxon ethnographical collections originating from nearly every culture in the world. Since the 19th century works of art and other articles of daily life have been assembled and these are now among the most significant items for preserving the heritage of many cultures. Exotic, precious and sometimes unique exhibits demonstrate the art and ways of life of a world that has moved closer together but which is still largely unfamiliar. The exhibition tour on the first floor provides exciting insights into the reality of life in Indonesia, India, Tibet and Mongolia, China, Japan, Europe and the Orient. The second tour takes visitors through Africa, America, then on to Australia and Oceania, thus completing the journey around the world. The exhibitions are designed in such a way that they are attractive to art connoisseurs as well as visitors who are interested in the ways of life of other cultures. The Museum für Völkerkunde in Leipzig can now look back on a history that extends back more than 140 years. Having been initially founded and supported by Leipzig citizens, today it has grown into one of the leading institutions of its kind in Germany.

The GRASSI Museum of Musical Instruments:
Reopened at the end of 2005, the Grassi Museum of musical instrument museum houses one of the world's largest collections of musical instruments. The collection has around 5,000 exhibits from Europe and the rest of the world dating from the 16th to the 20th century. The idea dates back to the Dutch music publisher Paul de Wit. He opened a museum in 1886 in which he exhibited historical musical instruments that he occasionally played. Today visitor can do so in the museum's sound laboratory. On a tour of the current collection, visitors can take a journey through the development of the musical instrument from the Renaissance through to the present day. The museum's treasures include the oldest clavichord created by Domenicus Pisaurensis in 1542 and the oldest fortepiano produced by the inventor of the hammer technique, Bartolomeo Christofori, in 1726 that has been preserved in its original condition. The powerful Welte cinema organ, built in 1929 and now restored, has also returned to the exhibition after a 60-year break. The collection also includes approx. 300 musical instruments from Asia, Africa and the Americas.