MUNICH'S CROWN JEWELS

       Ten years ago, the city was promised a collection of 700 gems of 20th-century art - but only after it had built a box beautiful enough to house them
       Since May this year Munich residents have been flocking to welcome Museum Brandhorst, a new arrival in the art district of Kunstareal and one that has lifted the city's cultural significance to another level.
       The Brandhorst Collection was named after Udo and Anette Brandhorst who began acquiring works by the 20th century's foremost artists in the 1970s. Udo who sits on the board of the Zurich-based Agrippina Insurance Group - and Anette - an heriess to the Henkel consumer-products fortune - hunted down paintings and sculptures, but also literature. When Anette died in 1999, Udo decided to donate their entire collection of more than 700 works to the state, providing that a suitable home be built for it.
       Ten years later and 48 million euro (Bt2.34 billion) well spent, the state-of-the-art Museum Brandhorst has risen. Designed by Berlin architects Sauerbruch Hutton, the building is clad with 36,000 metre-long ceramic rods in 23 different colours, arranged vertically over a sheet-metal skin.
       From afar, the rods coalesce to form a neutral colour whose tone and brightness seems to whose tone and brightness seems to waver. As the visitor gets closer, each rod resolves into its individual colour.
       The result is an artwork in itself, an abstract painting of shimering colours hung against the dull greys that dominate this district.
       What the Brandhorst offers inside its walls is even more dazzling. Dominating the second of the building's two storeys is the heart of the Brandhorst Collection - some 60 paintings, drawings and sculptures by Cy Twombly. The American is considered the most important representative of a generation of artists who distanced themselves from abstract expressionism. The Brandhorst's collection of his work is the largest in Europe and considered the most important overview of the artist's creative development outside the United States, matched only by the Cy Twombly Gallery in Houston, Texas.
       Emphasising how important Twombly is to the Brandhorst is the octagonal room above the foyer that was designed especially to house his masterpiece. The "Lepanto Cycle" comprises 12 large-format canvases inspired by the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, which ended the Ottoman Empire's influence in the Europe. Turquoise, yellow and red paint has been splotched, scratched and left to drip down the canvases to evoke a five-hour naval battle that left more than 53,000 dead. In these airy surrounds, the vast work mesmerises visitors.
       Twombly first exhibited the monumental series at the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001, where he received a lifetime achievement award.
       His most recent work is "Untitled (Roses)", a series of six large, vibrantly coloured paintings of roses created with the museum in mind.
       The other focal point of the collection is Andy Warhol. Visitors are greeted at the exhibition's entrance by his "Hammer and Sickle" - the emblem both of socialism and the counter-culture during the '60s and '70s. More than 100 of his works - self-portraits, the Last Supper series and the Camouflage series - dot the ground floor and basement.
       But Twombly and Warhol aren't the only stars here. A walk through the 3,200 square metres of galleries reveals works by Picasso, Juan Miro, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Damien Hirst, Mike Kelley, Gerhard Richter and Joseph Beuys.
       White walls and ash parquet floors make for a perfect state, while a clever system of reflectors funnels in daylight and slims the museum's carbon footprint. The heating and cooling system were also designed for maximum environmental friendliness.
       Together with its neighbour, the Pinakothek der Moderne museum, the Brandhorst has launched Munich into the forefront of cities devoted to the art of the 20th and 21st centuries.
       Unsurprisingly, it's now one of the most talked-about destinations among contemporary art lovers.

       AT A GLANCE
       Museum Brandhorst is open daily except Monday from 10am-6pm (8pm on Thursday). Admission is 7 Euro (Bt340) including audio guide. Tickets on Sunday are 1 Euro. For more, pay a visit to www.Museum-Brandhorst.de.