Olaf Gulbransson Museum

At Kurgarten 5 in Tegernsee, the Olaf-Gulbransson-Museum Tegernsee holds an established place in the region’s cultural scene as a branch gallery of the Bayerischen Staatsgemäldesammlungen. The museum building is listed as a historic monument and is located immediately adjacent to the Kurpark.

The initiative to found the museum came in 1962 from relatives of the artist; a founding association was formed, and the museum opened in 1966. In the 1970s the building and a large part of the collections were transferred to the Free State of Bavaria as a foundation; since then the institution has been a branch gallery of the Bayerischen Staatsgemäldesammlungen and is operated in coordination with a local society. Architecturally, the house began as a pavilion-like structure with an open atrium; it was later repeatedly expanded and modernized for exhibitions. In 1993 an underground exhibition space was created, and in 2007/2008 a largely subterranean new building was added in the Kurpark, providing a new entrance with a ticket office as well as additional exhibition, storage and administrative areas. Subsequently the original building was restored in accordance with monument-preservation standards and adapted to contemporary exhibition requirements.

The collection focuses on the work of the Norwegian painter and draftsman Olaf Gulbransson; on permanent display are primarily paintings and an extensive documentation of the history of the satirical magazine Simplicissimus, with special attention to Gulbransson’s contributions. Supplementary temporary exhibitions present Gulbransson’s drawings, works by his pupil Josef Oberberger and lithographs by Honoré Daumier; since 2007 the operating society has also had a larger portion of Daumier’s lithographic oeuvre at its disposal. A 2023 redesign of the permanent exhibition places the multifaceted nature of Gulbransson at the centre and openly addresses his less-than-admirable opportunism during the National Socialist era.