The museum

Today’s museum was once Emil Nolde’s residential building and was designed by the artist in 1927. Like a stronghold with narrow windows and flat roof, the building self-confidently rises from the flat marshes. Its angularity and clear-cut shape recalls the Bauhaus architecture of the 1920s. Nolde consciously chose this architectonic contrast to distinguish his house from the crouching thatched Frisian farmsteads of the surrounding countryside.
Nolde aligned the rooms on the ground floor with the course of the sun and each window offered a beautiful view of the garden. Nolde’s studio was also located on the ground floor. Today, his religious paintings are exhibited there. Directly above the studio lies the hall of paintings that Nolde had added on in 1937. The former living rooms on the first floor have been converted into cabinets to house exhibitions of Nolde’s works on paper.