Porticus

During the Second World War, the building of the city library of Frankfurt was destroyed during air raids in March 1944; only the portico and pediment , supported by six Corinthian columns, have survived from the building. After the war, the building was not restored; in 1958, the ruins were secured for preservation and included in the list of city architectural monuments.

In 1987, Casper Koenig was appointed rector of the Shtedelshule local art school: with the consent to the position, he, among other things, set the condition for an independent exhibition hall for the institution. After only four months of construction, the new hall - designed by architects Maria Theresa Deutsch and Klaus Dreissigaker - was built of prefabricated structures behind the portico, directly on the remains of the former city library .

The interior space without windows, an area of ​​eight by sixteen meters and a height of five meters, was lined with light gray panels and was as simple as possible. To the left and right of the main building were administrative buildings built of stacked containers . As a result, Kunsthalle Porticus was opened before the city book fair in October 1987; The first exhibition was dedicated to the work of Swiss artist Dieter Roth .

In 2000, Daniel Birnbaum became the director of Shtedelshule and the head of the exhibition hall; three years later, the city authorities decided to reconstruct the library of the Old Town - to house the Literaturhaus Frankfurt Institute. For the exhibition hall, the construction of a new building was planned, the location of which was chosen site at the Old Bridge; the building was designed by Frankfurt architect Christoph Mekler, and the construction itself was funded by the Stiftung Giersch Foundation. At the construction stage, since the summer of 2003, the exhibition hall was temporarily moved to the Leinwandhaus building - for this the first floor of a 14th century Gothic building located in the very center of the old city was rebuilt by Tobias Reberger.

On May 5, 2006, the exhibition hall moved to its new premises - already in April, light illumination designed by Olafur Eliasson was installed under its glass roof. In the next two years, 12 light installations were shown using this roof. The first exhibition in a new place was a joint exhibition of works by Slovenian artist Marjetica Potrc and Argentine artist Tomás Saraceno.

As of 2019, the new building and exhibition activities of the gallery were funded from the funds of the Städelschule Portikus eV fund, which is also involved in supporting the students of Shtedelshule; his motto was “to promote art today means investing in tomorrow’s intellect”.

• Schirn (gallery)
• Kunstville (Nuremberg)
• Hamburg Kunsthalle
• Kunsthalle Darmstadt

• Dankwart Guratzsch: Manifest gegen die modernistische Bigotterie // Die Welt . 18. April 2006.
• Brigitte Kölle: Portikus Frankfurt am Main, 1987-1997, Portikus, 1997, ISBN 3-928071-34-3 .
• Christoph Mäckler: Kunsthalle Portikus. Niggli, 2006, ISBN 978-3-7212-0602-9 .
• Rudolf Schmitz: Die Kunstkiste am Main. In: Kunst in Frankfurt 1945 bis heute. (Hrsg. Rolf Lauter) Societät, Frankfurt am Main, 1995, ISBN 3-7973-0581-8 , S. 354 ff.
• Chris van Uffelen: Museumsarchitektur. Ullman, Potsdam 2010, ISBN 978-3-8331-6058-5 , S. 244-247.

• Portikus Frankfurt am Main . frankfurt-tourismus.de . Tourismus + Congress GmbH Frankfurt am Main. Date accessed August 8, 2019.