[1] In January 1882, the Craftsmen's and Education Association stated in a citizens' meeting: "It is desirable that a museum be established in Crefeld that represents the interests of the arts and crafts in particular".

The Krefeld city councillor Albert Oetker bought the Kramer collection and donated it in time for the opening of the museum.

Fritz Muthmann's term of office from 1937 to 1943 saw the crackdown on so-called degenerate art under the Nazi regime, and thus almost all of Creutz's collection of modern works were confiscated.

With the limited funds at his disposal, Wember attempted to purchase works of art from the 1930s after the currency reform in 1948 to expand and round off existing focal points of the collection.

In 1953 and 1954, sheets by Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy, Joan Miró, Matisse and Picasso, among others, could be acquired at favourable prices, and thus the importance of contemporary graphic art increased within the collections.

[6] In 1955, Ulrich Lange made his childhood home, built between 1928 and 1930 by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, available to the city of Krefeld for ten years as an exhibition venue for contemporary art.

Under Wember's management, Haus Lange became one of the leading exhibition venues for avant-garde art, and it was here that Yves Klein held his first and last museum retrospective during his lifetime.

[8] Wember used a wide range of contacts with gallery owners such as Michael Hertz, Alfred Schmela, Rolf Ricke, Rudolf Zwirner and Conny Fischer for exhibitions and purchases.

The two-storey villas, built between 1928 and 1931 in the style of classical modernism, extend into the site as flat structures consisting of nested cubes and dominant rows of windows.

The result was landscaped areas with wide lawns, straight paths and flowerbeds whose geometry follows the formal language of the buildings.

So too, the former Beckerath Collection forms a closed complex of Italian Renaissance art with, among other things, several high-quality sculptural works of the Quattrocento.

Of particular note is Der Schadow-Kreis [de], a joint painting by Eduard Bendemann, Theodor Hildebrandt, Julius Hübner, Wilhelm von Schadow and Karl Ferdinand Sohn, created in Rome in 1830.

Classical Modernism is represented, among others, by the marble sculpture Eva (1900) by Auguste Rodin and the painting The Houses of Parliament in London (1904) by Claude Monet.

The Painting Flood (1912) by Wassily Kandinsky Symphony Black and Red by Alexej von Jawlensky and a group of works by Heinrich Campendonk represent the Blaue Reiter.

Of particular note are the Constructivist works by Piet Mondrian, whose rightful ownership has been under discussion for some time,[10] Theo van Doesburg and László Moholy-Nagy.

Due to the large number of works, Klein, along with Joseph Beuys, forms a central artistic position that continues to shape the collection today.

In the 1980s, there was a turn to European positions, especially to artists of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, including paintings by Nicola De Maria and Norbert Prangenberg.

As early as 1952, he created the fountain, a commissioned work that he made – mediated by Paul Wember, the museum director at the time – for the Krefelder Edelstahlwerke.

The central object is the installation Barraque D'Dull Odde acquired in 1971, a double shelf with a lectern and seating, in which all the relics of Beuys' artistic life can be found.

In February 1977, Joseph Beuys spent two days and nights dismantling the Barraque D'Dull Odde in its old location and reassembling it in a newly designed exhibition space in which the windows were covered and painted completely white.

In the 1980s, works by Gerhard Richter, Nicola De Maria, Abraham David Christian, Mimmo Paladino, A. R. Penck and Norbert Prangenberg were added.

In the 1990s, graphic works by artists such as Christian Boltanski, Bethan Huws, Anri Sala or Luc Tuymans entered the collection.

[12] Thus, major exhibitions by Alberto Giacometti, Alexander Calder, ZERO, Marcel Duchamp, Robert Indiana, Claes Oldenburg, among others, can be pointed to, Timm Ulrichs, Adolf Luther, Keith Sonnier, Abraham David Christian, Thomas Schütte, Gerhard Richter, Richard Deacon, Stan Douglas or Andreas Gursky.

The beginning was made in 1961 by Yves Klein with temporary fire columns, which he lit in the garden of the house, as well as a Raum der Leere, a retrofitted room with a floor area of seven square metres, which he whitewashed in a grainy white and which exists unchanged to this day.