Liebieghaus

The Liebieghaus is a late 19th-century villa in Frankfurt, Germany. It contains a sculpture museum, the Städtische Galerie Liebieghaus, which is part of the Museumsufer on the Sachsenhausen bank of the River Main. Max Hollein (b. 1969, Vienna) has been the director the Städel Museum since January 2006.HistoryThe Liebieghaus was built in 1896, in a palatial, Historicist style, as a retirement home for the Bohemian textile manufacturer Baron Heinrich von Liebieg (1839–1904). The city of Frankfurt acquired the building in 1908 and devoted it to the sculpture collection.A renovation was completed in October 2009. This included adding a publicly accessible "Open Depot", making it possible for the first time to view certain parts of the collection that are not in the permanent exhibition.CollectionThe museum includes ancient Greek, Roman and Egyptian sculpture, as well as Medieval, Baroque, Renaissance and Classicist pieces, and works from the Far East. The collection was built up mostly through endowments and international purchases, and is universal in scope, with no particular link to the art or history of Frankfurt.The building stands on the Schaumainkai, in a garden in which a number of sculptures are also on display, including a replica of Dannecker's Ariadne on the Panther. The original, which was acquired by the banker Simon Moritz von Bethmann in 1810, is currently in the depot.