The abstract art of collector Reinhard Ernst gets a new home in Germany

Reinhard Ernst, an entrepreneur who built his fortune manufacturing precision gears and motors, was already in his forties when he first discovered a passion for art. Now in his late seventies, he has founded a new museum in Wiesbaden, Germany, to house his collection of post-war abstract art.

The Reinhard Ernst Museum, in a building designed by the Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki, who died on June 6, is expected to open on June 23. It shows Ernst’s collection, built up since the 1980s, with works by Helen Frankenthaler, Tony Cragg, Lee Krasner, Frank Stella, Pierre Soulages and Yuichi Inoue, among others.

With a glossy white facade, 14 meter high ceilings and granite gray floors, the building offers more than 2,500 m² of exhibition space. It is located in a prime location of the city government, near the Art and Natural History Museum in the center of Wiesbaden. The construction costs of approximately €80 million were financed by the Reinhard and Sonja Ernst Foundation.

The museum commissioned glass works by Katharina Grosse, MadC and Karl-Martin Hartmann and an installation by Bettina Pousttchi for the foyer. A sculpture by Eduardo Chillida stands in a glass-enclosed courtyard.

In 1981, Ernst and three of his colleagues acquired Harmonic Drive, the Japanese-American precision engineering company for which he worked, through a management buyout. He bought the remaining shares in the company in the 1990s and then took it public in 1999. Seven years later, he founded another company, Ovalo, which by 2016 had expanded into France, Britain and Spain. a Japanese company in 2017 and retired from his directorship at Harmonic Drive.

Interior decoration to serious collection

Over the decades, his art collection grew as his professional life flourished. The first works he bought were by two German artists: Karl Otto Götz and Hubert Berke. During business trips to Japan and the US he began visiting museums and in the late 1980s he began purchasing Japanese and American art.

“I developed a love for abstract art,” says Ernst The Art Newspaper. “I bought the first paintings for decoration on the walls of my house. Over time I bought a lot of photos, and at a certain point I ran out of free walls – that’s when I realized I had become a collector.”

Reinhard Ernst and his wife Sonja set up a foundation in 2000 and have funded a community center near Fukushima, Japan, and a music school in Eppstein, near their home town of Wiesbaden. Because they have no children, they consider the foundation “their personal legacy,” according to a statement.

Ernst says he offered his collection to two museums, but neither had enough space to hang more than a few paintings. “That’s where the idea of ​​setting up a museum came about,” he says.

In addition to more than forty works by Frankenthaler, who Ernst says is his favorite painter, the collection includes artists such as Robert Motherwell, Richard Diebenkorn, Jackson Pollock, Richard Serra, Damien Hirst, Sarah Morris, Neo Rauch and Toko Shinoda.

Christoph Zuschlag, professor of art history, described it in a report for the city of Wiesbaden as “unique in its international reach, reaching far beyond Europe to Japan and the US; in its inclusion of all major artist groups, and in the breadth and quality with which it documents a range of trends and movements” in abstract art after 1945. Zuschlag said he knew of no other collection, either in a museum or in private hands, that can be right.

Ernst still collects. His latest acquisition, he says, is a painting by the German-British artist Michael Anthony Müller. He mainly buys at auctions and describes the November season in New York as ‘a must’.

“I used to go to trade fairs a lot, but now much less,” he says. “What you see at fairs does not necessarily reflect the art market. You see many works that are sold to people who will sell them again in a few years or put them in the cellar. I am neither: I buy for a museum, to show to the public.’

The Reinhard Ernst Museum expects 60,000 paying visitors in its first year. The mornings are reserved for schools and educational visits; The museum is accessible to everyone from 12 noon.

Wiesbaden is one of the richest cities in Germany. It is a traditional health and gambling resort and attracted almost 600,000 visitors last year. Thousands of American troops are stationed in and around the city, a connection that Ernst hopes to take advantage of. He says he expects the museum to attract visitors from the US and Japan, as well as Germany and neighboring France. He would also like to lend works abroad.

“Contacts with foreign museums will be very important and we are developing these,” says Ernst.

• The first temporary exhibition in the museum focuses on the architect. Fumihiko Maki and Maki & Associates: towards humane architecture runs from June 23 to February 9, 2025