The Ludwig Museum at the Russian Museum

In 1994 famous German collectors Peter and Irene Ludwig gifted their collection of art of the second half of the XX-th century. This gift resulted in a special part of the permanent exhibition «The Ludwig Museum at the Russian Museum» which hosted its first visitors on the 20 March, 1995 at the Marble Palace. The content of the collection was defined by the collectors together with the representatives of the Russian Museum. Among the artists whose works happen to be part of the collection are Pablo Picasso, Joseph Beuys, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Tom Wesselmann, George Seagull, James Rosenquist, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, Anselm Kiefer, Jorg Immendorff, Jonathan Borofsky, Jeff Koons, Ilya Kabakov and others. «The Ludwig Museum at the Russian Museum» reflects the major preferences of the collectors. The collection has two main core directions. The first is American op-art the importance of which was immediately comprehended by the Ludwigs. The pop-art, which was the most radical art movement of that time, became the foundation for the future collection. The second movement the Ludwigs gave preference to was the German neo-expressionism which brought back timeliness to the painting in 1980-ies together with the debatable phenomenon of «the German» in German art. Regular participation of the works from «The Ludwig Museum at the Russian Museum» in world art projects proves the collection to be of high quality and viability. In 2014 the Russian Museum organized the exhibition of the collection in Brazil. The exhibition at the Cultural Center of the Bank of Brazil in Rio-de-Janeiro became second in visiting rate. During first two months of the display it had been seen by 530 088 visitors in the cities of Sao-Paulo, Belo-Horizonte, Rio de Janeiro. The total number of visitors was around one million.