Another visit to the Kolumba Museum

I recently visited the Kolumba Museum again. Since I had already written about the museum itself, its architecture, and its historical setting in an earlier post, this follow-up is less a full article than a small photographic addendum. The visit once again made clear how strongly Kolumba is shaped by its spatial atmosphere: The quiet rooms, the raw materials, the carefully controlled light, and the way the building guides attention without forcing it.

In the photographs I took during my visit I tried to capture some of these impressions. The museum is definitely less a sequence of individual objects than a setting in which architecture, light, and exhibits are experienced together. This is also what makes a visit to Kolumba such a special experience: The rooms do not merely contain the artworks, but provide the conditions under which they can be viewed slowly and attentively.

The following images are visual notes to that experience and I hope they convey something of the unique atmosphere of Kolumba.

References and further reading

• Website of the Kolumba Museumꜛ
• Wikipedia article on the Kolumba Museumꜛ
• Eduard Hegel, St. Kolumba in Köln: eine mittelalterliche Grossstadtpfarrei in ihrem Werden und Vergehen, 1996, Schmitt Verlag, ISBN: 3-87710-177-1