Additional opening hours of the LWL Museum für Kunst und Kultur [en: LWL Museum for Art and Culture] in Münster (Westf.), Germany
On request of a naturist group, the museum had opened the exhibition "Das nackte Leben" [original title in UK: "Bare life"] on Saturday for visitors, who wanted to leave their clothes completely at the cloakroom. The theme was almost to visit the exhibition in the nude, because many of the paintings show people in nude life situations. So why should the observers of these works of art be clothed? That would be voyeurism!
Since the museum entrance area on the ground floor was still open to the general public for passage, the naturists withdrew to the entrance area of the special exhibition upstairs, which shows paintings from London between 1950 and 1980, after the welcome address by the museum director Dr Arnhold.
In the entrance area of the exhibition, coat racks with hangers were waiting for the visitors, who did not hesitate for long and took off their clothes without further ado. Some even wanted to experience the museum floor barefoot, but most of them kept their shoes or socks on.
The guided tour began on the perron …
… with the presentation of the artists and their different painting techniques.
Soon, three groups were arranged for seperately guided tours. Art historians were responsible for presenting the pictures and explaining their special features to the nude visitors. Only a few of the nude visitors had renounced a guided tour and dedicated themselves to the appreciation of art calmly contemplating the works of art on their own.
For most of the naturists, it was the first time they had been nude in a museum, but some of the participants had already visited the exhibition "Nude Men in Art" in the nude two years ago in the Leopold Museum in Vienna – at that time even 300 nude visitors had come, after the museum had announced the hours for nude visits in the press. Now, the LWL Museum in Münster has proven, that here, too, a cosmopolitan understanding of naturist appreciation of art does exist.