Grassi Museum

The Grassi Museum is a building complex in Leipzig, Germany, home to three museums: the Ethnography Museum, Musical Instruments Museum, and Applied Arts Museum.It is sometimes known as the "Museums in the Grassi", or as the "New" Grassi Museum (to distinguish it from the older building with this name, now home to the municipal library).OriginsThe museum is named for Franz Dominic Grassi, a Leipzig businessman of Italian descent, who bequeathed over two million marks to the city upon his death in 1880. This helped pay for a number of new constructions, including the Gewandhaus and the Mende Fountain, as well as the "Old Grassi Museum". Built from 1892-95 on the Königsplatz (now Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz), this originally housed the Museum of Ethnography and the Museum of Arts and Crafts, and is now the municipal library.New buildingThe old museum became too small for the collections, prompting its director to call for an architecture competition to design a new building, to be paid for with the Grassi bequest. The winning firm designed a building with elements of New Objectivity and Art Deco, based around several courtyards. It was built from 1925-29 (one of the few new museums of the Weimar Era), on the site of the old Johannis Hospital. The urban planner Hubert Ritter had intended for it to be the starting point of an eastward expansion of the city. It originally contained the Johannis Church, demolished in 1963.