Paper presented at the conference Art Museums and the Price of Success; an International Comparison, held at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on December 10 and 11, 1992, and organized by the Boekman Foundation, Amsterdam.

... [the author] discusses the changes and developments that have taken place in German museums since the Second World War. [He] uses the developments in German art museums (concentrating on museums with 20th-century art collections) including the problems of museums in the former East Germany and the rest of eastern Europe, as an example for general trends in art museums in the West. He points out the most important features in that development, for example the reconstruction of German museums after the war, the ambition and productive rivalry of Bundeslander (federal states) and local communities with respect to art and art museums, the contemporary art boom, the explosive production of new buildings and the effects of the (recent) economic crisis. (General Introduction, p. 15-16).

CONTENTS-- Postwar Germany. Museum boom. Emergence and expansion. A more critical approach. Embarras de richesses [embarrassment of riches]. East-west cooperation.

Paper presented at the conference Art Museums and the Price of Success; an International Comparison, held at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on December 10 and 11, 1992, and organized by the Boekman Foundation, Amsterdam.