Modern art meets the Middle Ages in the new Colmar museum designed by Herzog & De Meuron

The new Musée Unterlinden, one of the major cultural poles of Colmar, will be inaugurated in this town, a tourist resort in the heart of Alsace, on January 23. The project was commissioned to the prestigious Swiss studio Herzog & De Meuron in 2009. The joint presence of Presidents Francois Hollande and Martin Schulz underlies the international dimension of the new museum.

The enlargement of the museum, which originally occupied the cloister and the Gothic church of a 13th century Dominican convent, became necessary because of the saturation of the exhibition halls and the storage rooms, and the need to adapt the services for the public and the reception spaces to current standards.

The museum, which is mainly popular for the artworks of German Middle Ages and Renaissance - first of all the Issenheim altarpiece, a masterpiece by Grunewald - also expanded its modern collection in the past decades, which made urgent the need for specifically dedicated exhibition halls.

The new museum complex has incorporated the “des bains” building, that is the municipal public baths, which dates back to the early 20th century and stands in front of the present museum, and a new wing. Now, the two buildings form a second open courtyard and are linked to the original building by an underground exhibition gallery.

The pivot of the two complexes is the "small house" building, the reinterpretation of an architectural unit, which indicated the entrance to the old convent and now indicates the presence of the Town museum.

The Herzog & De Meuron project has gone beyond the Museum expansion and redesigned an important area of Colmar old town. The project restores one of the most interesting elements of the original fabric of the town through the re-opening of the Sinn canal, which is the axis of symmetry of the new Unterlinden.

Expanding the exhibition area by twofold implied a rethinking and rationalization of the museum tour: Middle Ages and Renaissance art will be exhibited in the medieval cloister, the new wing will be reserved for contemporary art, while temporary exhibitions will be set up in the bath building.

The architects paid great attention and care for museography, and considered each presentation element in detail. Goppion has designed over 180 display units, ranging from metal and stone podia to supports for altarpieces, to several types of showcases: the largest one – a m 7 x 4 m floor-to-ceiling glass wall – protects a reproduction of Guernica on fabric, which is exhibited permanently for the first time.

During long study sessions with the architects, Goppion designers redesigned the opening mechanisms of showcases, minimizing the visible technique and developing the hinge into a state-of-the-art design solution, which meets Herzog & De Meuron architects’ refined, minimalist and streamlined language, without disregarding the high performance and user-friendliness requirements.