Museum of Art and Industry
Decorative arts museum with a Japanese tea room and centuries of European and Asian design under one roof.
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About this audio guide
This guide to the Museum of Art and Industry in Hamburg starts with a tea bowl upstairs, deliberately lopsided and cracked, and traces it back to Justus Brinckmann, a Hamburg lawyer who bought stacks of unwanted Japanese lacquerware and porcelain at the 1873 Vienna World's Fair when almost no one else wanted them. It follows how he opened this museum in 1877 to argue those objects belonged beside Europe's finest craftsmanship, in a building that took a direct hit in 1943 and stood half-ruined for years. Its second director, Max Sauerlandt, was forced out by the Nazis in 1933 for championing the wrong artists.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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