Massing (dpa / lby) – The porcelain figures of the Lower Bavarian artist Berta Hummel (1909-1946) are known worldwide. In the future, the works – around 3,500 figures, 1,200 pictures and numerous personal items – will also be on public display again. A new Berta Hummel Museum is being built on the site of the Massing open-air museum (Rottal-Inn district). The first details of the museum concept have now been set. Actually, construction should have started in 2020, but this was delayed due to Corona, among other things.
At a meeting of the Lower Bavarian open-air museum association on Thursday in Deggendorf, Timm Miersch, head of the Massing and Finsterau open-air museums, presented the plans. Accordingly, there should be a permanent exhibition and two special shows per year with guest curators.
Four focal points are planned for the permanent exhibition: the biography of the artist, her artistic development, Berta Hummel in Massing and the Hummel figurines. In the special exhibitions, the themes should become more abstract and also have points of contact with the open-air museums, which trace the rural life of the past centuries, says Miersch. “We don’t want to create an art museum that has nothing to do with the open-air museum, but to closely interlink both.”
The association has decided on a cost framework of 3.6 million euros for the new building and the inventory of the works, which the family is said to be making available as a permanent loan for 30 years. The first 1.3 million euros are included in the 2023 budget. The exact start of construction is not known.
The descendants of the artist closed the Berta Hummel Museum at the end of 2019 after 25 years. The museum was housed in the house where Hummel was born. The family had subsidized the museum with around 200,000 euros in the last two years of operation, nephew and museum director Alfred Hummel justified the step at the time. That would not have been financially viable in the long run.
Berta Hummel, who bore the name Maria Innocentia as a nun, not only left behind porcelain figures, but also drawings and paintings.
