Lower Saxony State Museum

The Lower Saxony State Museum comprises the State Gallery (Landesgalerie), featuring paintings and sculptures from the Middle Ages to the 20th century, plus departments of archaeology, natural history and ethnology. The museum includes a vivarium with fish, amphibians, reptiles and arthropods. 

The predecessor of museum ran out of space for its art collections, prompting the construction of the current building, on the edge of the Maschpark, in 1902. It was designed by Hubert Stier in a Neo-Renaissance style. The cupola above the central risalit was destroyed by Allied bombs during the war. Extensive renovations and modernisations were carried out in the building's interior from 1995 to 2000.

The State Gallery features art from the 11th to the 20th centuries. The collection includes German and Italian works from the Renaissance and the Baroque, 17th-century Flemish and Dutch paintings, Danish paintings from the 19th and 20th centuries (e.g. Constantin Hansen), and a print room featuring old German masters, Dutch drawings, 19th-century printworks, and drawings by German Impressionists. Some of the best-known artists include Rembrandt, Rubens and Albrecht Dürer.

The gallery's other strengths include German and French Impressionist paintings, works by Max Liebermann, Lovis Corinth and Max Slevogt, and major works from members of the Künstlerkolonie Worpswede group, such as Bernhard Hoetger, Fritz Overbeck, Otto Modersohn and Paula Modersohn-Becker. Caspar David Friedrich's four-piece Tageszeitenzyklus (The Times of Day) is the only complete such series by Friedrich in a single museum.

Address
Willy-Brandt-Allee 5, Hanover, Germany

Established
1902