Since 1874, the oldest and one of the most important collections of Messel fossils, which were recovered from oil shale that was around 48 million years old, have been on display in the museum. The Messel Collection is one of the figureheads of the Hessian State Museum in Darmstadt and a special cultural asset of the State of Hesse. In addition, the fossil deposit Grube Messel near Darmstadt was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List as the first German natural monument in 1995, because it allows a unique insight into the early evolution of mammals. This award from the Messel pit will mark its 25th anniversary in 2020.

The rules in the museum are different from those in everyday life. While objects of daily use are repaired, reused or maintained, the museum tries to change them as little as possible. The traces of time should be preserved, as they are important contemporary witnesses in the way society deals with its history.

The MUSEUM Jagdschloss Kranichstein searches for traces and makes the story behind the repairs and restorations of paintings, textiles, weapons and furniture visible.

Sculpture garden at the Spanish Tower in Park Rosenhöhe

The Darmstadt sculptor Wilhelm Loth, who died in 1993, would have turned 100 on September 24, 2020. The artist, best known for his characteristic female torsos, is still present in the cultural life of his hometown today, for example as the initiator of the Darmstadt Art Prize, which he himself received in 1955. The award, which has been named after him since 1995, is given regularly by the City of Darmstadt to renowned national and international artists. The BS Kulturstiftung has supported the award ceremony since it was founded and Wilhelm Loth has a special bond with it. In order to underline this bond, the foundation is commemorating the artist with a retrospective on the occasion of the opening of its new sculpture garden at the Spanish Tower on Darmstadt's Rosenhöhe.

The 20 or so sculptures from all of Wilhelm Loth's creative phases come mainly from the estate that is administered by his nephew Alexander Heil (Karlsruhe). As the artist's first open-air exhibition, the exhibition promises an exciting dialogue between the designed human form and the surrounding landscape on the edge of the Rosenhöhe natural monument.

The exhibition presents the innovative work of the Darmstadt artists' colony between 1904 and 1914. Following on from the first part of the collection presentation "RAUMKUNST - Made in Darmstadt 1901", the second part also refers to the idea of the artists' colony members, with each individual project draft trying to penetrating art and everyday life. Individual objects should not only be aesthetically designed, but should also merge into a total work of art in interaction - as part of completely designed room arrangements.

The exhibition mainly includes pictures by Gerd Winter that were created in 2019/2020/2021. The central concern of the artist is to make painting visible in all its multi-layered facets and to allow the colours to enter into a dialogue with one another. In the last five years in particular, Gerd Winter has broken up his strict vertical grid, gives space to painting and then delimits it in the next moment with the help of geometric elements.

On the occasion of the 100th birthday of Joseph Beuys on May 12, 2021, the exhibition »Joseph Beuys. Ulysses« for the first time shows all six booklets by Joseph »Beuys extends the Ulysses by six further chapters on behalf of James Joyce«, as a complete work. Thanks to digitisation and new presentation methods, the exhibition makes it possible for the first time to visualise all 355 drawings of the six booklets. Beuys' immense potential of his artistic ideas and energies, which was previously closed and hidden between the six black notebooks, is now finally open to the viewer and made accessible.

Hardly any other artist of his time is as omnipresent in German museums and exhibition halls as Max Liebermann. His role as a pioneer of modernism and the most important representative of German impressionism has often been described. Liebermann was a well-connected painter.

The Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt presents a comprehensive exhibition with outstanding loans from private collections, some of which have never been shown to the public.

Once upon a time there was a brave prince and a beautiful princess... - that's how fairy tales that tell of an alleged carefree life, precious clothes and magnificent castles begin.

But what was everyday life really like for royal children growing up at a small princely court like Hesse-Darmstadt?

Being born to rule meant above all discipline and obedience, as personal well-being must take second place to higher dynastic interests. From birth, every public appearance was in the service of representation. Training and education served to prepare the children to play their role at court as perfectly as possible.

The exhibition focuses on the numerous portraits of children preserved in the House of Hesse from the late 16th to the early 20th century. Baptismal gifts, baby bottles and tin soldiers, timetables, canes and pincushions also provide an insight into the everyday life of the young princes and princesses through the centuries.

The Darmstadt mammoth is American, a mastodon, and a sensation in paleontology history: in 1801, it was the first museum-assembled skeleton of an extinct large animal in the US and so significant that american president Thomas Jefferson considered the site a national affair and Alexander von Humboldt visited it during his trip to the United States. Around 1850, the skeleton came via a number of detours to Darmstadt. For more than one hundred and fifty years it has been a Darmstädter or, as one says here, a true Heiner. The exhibition "American Heiner" traces the history of this world-famous fossil elephant skeleton, which, according to its discoverer, is also called "Peale's Mastodon".