The Danner Rotunde is a round room
in
the basement of Pinakothek der Moderne.

The name Danner Rotunde comes from a foundation called
Benno und Therese Danner’sche Kunstgewerbe-Stiftung.
For short, it is called: Danner Foundation.
A foundation gives out money for various purposes,
for example for museums or for the education of young people.
The Danner Foundation exists since 1920 in Munich.

Artists redesign the Danner Rotunde about once every 5 years.
The first artist was Hermann Jünger in 2004.
The next one was Karl Fritsch, 

he made the Rotunde very colourful.
Then, with Otto Künzli, it was all white.
Both are professors of goldsmithing and jewellery artists.
They are known all over the world.

In 2020, it was time for another redesign of the Rotunde.
For the first time, jewellery artists
from Asia and Europe worked on it together:

• Mikiko Minewaki
She teaches at Hiko Mizuno College
in the city of Tokyo in Japan.
Die Neue Sammlung in Pinakothek der Moderne
invited Mikiko Minewaki back in 2015.
She came together with students from her college.
The exhibition was called Harebutai.
This is Japanese and means something like: 
to have a great opportunity.

• Hans Stofer
He was a professor at Burg Giebichenstein.
That is an university of art and design in

the city of Halle in Germany.
Before that, he was head of the jewellery course at

the Royal College in London.

• Alexander Blank
He is a jewellery artist from Munich.

Die Neue Sammlung invited these artists
to pick the objects for the exhibition.
They could combine different art styles from Europe and Asia.
The artists combined the objects in a very special way.
They want to surprise and inspire the visitors.
The Danner Foundation and Die Neue Sammlung
bought some of the objects.
Other objects were gifts.

At the same time as the Rotunde was redesigned,
a new light concept was created.
The idea came from Flavia Thumshirn from Munich.
She is a lighting designer and known all over the world.
She replaced the old halogen lamps with LED lamps.
LED lamps use little electricity and they do not get as warm.
This is better for the materials
that the jewellery is made of.

At the entrance of the Danner Rotunde,
there is an installation with neon writing.
An installation is an art project
that is used to design a whole room.
The writing consists of glass tubes
that are shaped like letters.
The glass tubes are filled with neon gas and
they can light up.

It is an installation by the lighting designer Yang Liu.
She is known for her lighting design in

the museum Albertinum in the city of Dresden, for example.
The Albertinum is an art collection owned by the state.
Yang Liu lives in Berlin.

These redesigns were only possible
thanks to the cooperation with the Danner Foundation.

There is a book about the jewellery collections from
the Danner Foundation and from Die Neue Sammlung.
It is called: Schmuck – Jewelry.
Schmuck is pronounced like this: shmook.
It means jewellery in German.
The book was published by arnoldsche Art Publishers.
Frederik Linke from Zurich in Switzerland designed it.