Freiburg's Central Art Depot

It is a Freiburg tradition that the BZ and Germany's two big parties, the CDU and the SPD, organize free-of-charge tours of exciting places and institutions for citizens during the summer holidays*. I had visited many a site in previous years, but this week I participated in three guided tours, two of which our local newspaper, the Badische Zeitung, had organized.

*School vacations started relatively late this year in Baden-Württemberg and will come to an end next week 

In my first blog, I would like to report on Freiburg's new Central Art Depot, built and finished in an industrial zone outside the city at the beginning of this year for a little less than 7 million euros.

I still remember the museums with waxed floors, poor lighting, and packed full glass cabinets in those olden days. In addition, these places had the same moldy smell. For modern museums, less is more; they bridge the gap by focusing on their highlights and adding a few additional items. But where did and does the rest go?

The ultimate highlight: Nofretete (Nefertiti) in the Neues Museum Berlin.
I took the photo in 2009.

Well, storing objets d'art requires space. In the past, Freiburg's museums had stored their collections in various places, even in Frankfurt, and, in most cases, not under acceptable conditions. During the visit to the new central storage place, I learned that it is not the temperature that counts but the humidity. Temperatures may range from 10 to 25 degrees centigrade, but the relative humidity must be kept constant at about 50% to preserve the stored items.

For more than 30 years, a dehumidifier has been running in my three basements to keep the relative humidity between 50 and 60%. Not that I store objets d'art, but to keep paper readable, the relative humidity must be at most 60% where it is stored.

58% relative humidity in my basement

Based on the principle of an inverted fridge, my dehumidifier is still the same old machine and working as it did on the day of its delivery, except for the indicator light, a neon bulb. There were no light diodes at the end of the 1970s.

The working horse in my basement. Note: the water collector below is filled to one-third.

Freiburg's Central Art Depot is a two-story building with a storage area of 5,500 square meters. The relative humidity inside is set to 50% to minimize energy consumption. Thick walls and insulation materials keep temperature variations minimal, while only a small amount of filtered and conditioned air is added to replace what is necessary.

Storage of ethnographic items.
Standing behind Tilmann von Stockhausen, I am listening to his explanations (©BZ).

Three groups of 25 people each were led through the building separately, and I was lucky with my guide. It was the director of Freiburg's museums, Tilmann von Stockhausen. He said that up to now, more than 100 lorries had collected and delivered the items for storage, but most were still in their boxes.

Our group is advancing in one of those big galleries
that house all the necessary tubing (©BZ).

It is more important for the people responsible to unite all items until the end of the year than to put them in order. Still, they started unpacking, and Dr. von Stockhausen proudly presented the first oil paintings in the correct order on their shifting rollers.

Tillmann von Stockhausen shows some of his treasures (©BZ).

With such well-organized storage, it will become easier to change items for exhibition in Freiburg's museums, in addition to the objets d'art permanently on display.

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