The museum platform nrw is a platform for modern art and for the museums of North Rhine-Westphalia. It is a work in progress that wants to provide access to the collections of selected museums of modernism in the region. The platform focuses on art that makes up the permanent collections of the museums involved. On three different levels and from different perspectives it offers insights into the museum spaces. The virtual museum of modernism nrw invites its visitors to stroll through curated exhibition rooms, and the platform search allows to explore and to research North Rhine-Westphalia's collections of modern art. The level service / planning your visit provides concrete suggestions for the preparation of the museum visit. All levels lead the visitors to the specific museum locations and their works of art. The platform levels want to provide orientation and encourage an extensive visit.

Thematically the museum platform nrw is dedicated to a realm of art that seems especially characteristic of the museum tradition and the tradition of art collecting in the 19th and 20th century in what is now the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia. In a region where modernism was highly visible in industrial culture and in architecture, a dense network of museums developed, inspired by art movements. The museums served private as well as public interests and concentrated especially on modernism and contemporary art. Approaches and concepts varied widely. One focus was the emphasis on 'masterpieces' of modern art, or the museums documented regional traditions in the works of individual artists or groups of artists. They positioned themselves as public centers of art and entered into a dialogue with the surrounding urban spaces. They developed museum concepts that questioned the didactic value of style or chronology and instead emphasized phenomena of everyday experience, of the world of media, and of popular culture. Moreover, larger cultural and medial spaces of reference also became important criteria for the museums' self-positioning. Some institutions, for example, emphasized non-European art or art's medial and virtual possibilities. In this way, they developed broader, globally oriented perspectives that helped to revise established notions of art or generated new relations to the everyday world of a modernized society.

The current collections of North Rhine-Westphalia include nearly all areas of modern art. They cover a spectrum of works associated with such concepts as Impressionism, Art Nouveau, Expressionism, and Constructivism, Surrealism and "Neue Sachlichkeit." The collections also include artistic phenomena of the second half of the 20th century: Objects and Installations, Action Art and Environments, Action Painting, Art Informel, Pop Art, Concept Art as well as postmodern developments of the New Figuration, Land and Body Art, Video and Internet Art.

The museum platform nrw wants to be more than a database or a virtual storage of modern art from the museum collections. Rather, with its structure and its contents it follows a curatorial concept based on work-specific criteria and on criteria that emphasize the history of the collections. The "architecture" as well as the "collection" of the museum platform nrw – both were developed simultaneously – were made possible through the cooperation of the NRW KULTURsekretariat (Wuppertal) and the participating museums and institutions. They are also based on the close collaboration of art historians and archivists, web developers and web designers, photographers, and graphic designers.

From the very beginning, the art displayed in the museums, art in North Rhine-Westphalia, has been at the center of the project. It has been made accessible from selected collections, and is presented through different paths of access. This provides a chance to display the highly heterogeneous art of modernism, located in widely varying collections, from one central location. The contexts and histories of the actual museum collections can therefore be maintained. At the same time, beyond the boundaries of the single museum and its location, new constellations of works can be presented in a shared museum space, constellations that could otherwise only be assembled in temporary exhibitions.

The broad spectrum of the museums' holdings is approached through a focus on works from the second half of the 20th century, works that closely relate to the art of the present. This first collection of the museum platform nrw will be progressively expanded and supplemented with further museum holdings that go back to the 19th century. Along with this growth, the network of the participating museums will also expand. The specific exhibition areas and the rooms for searches and for browsing will be increasingly able to trace those comprehensive collections of the 20th and 21st century that are located in North Rhine-Westphalia's museums of modernism.

The works of modernism can be accessed from the museum platform on different levels:

The (1) virtual museum of modernism nrw is designed as an art display. There are several choices for access to modern art in North Rhine-Westphalia, based on four "exhibition areas" or "rooms." These paths lead to > artists, > museums, and the > locations of the museums, but also to > themes that provide yet another possibility to access the collections.

The (2) platform search is designed as a realm of systematic search. It offers direct access to the platform collection through a quick and a specified search. The results provide information about the sites of the works, and they also lead back to the various exhibition areas of the virtual museum.

The (3) level of service / planning your visit is set up for organizing and downloading the art material collected. The material collected in the virtual museum of modernism nrw or through a platform search can be printed, organized and filed, and downloaded on the computer. This level also provides information for the personal charting of museum visits and a collection of links with further suggestions.