The grand old lady returns to celebrate her 90th birthday after a facelift: the municipal art gallery at Nuremberg's Marientor gate which is today known as the Kunsthalle Nürnberg was opened on 12 October 1913. The Nuremberg architect Otto Seegy erected the building in the outer ward of Nuremberg's city walls with nine light skylight-lit halls of varying proportions.

The changing function and history of the building is closely linked to the cultural self-projection and development of the city of Nuremberg. In the early years, therefore, this art gallery not only served the needs of artists' associations that resided in the Künstlerhaus next door, but also housed touring exhibitions and presentations by outside artists.

Renamed Fränkische Galerie in 1930, the gallery was used until 1937 by the municipal art collections for the museum presentation of the works of Nuremberg artists in its ownership. In the Second World War the front building was destroyed and several of the rooms were damaged and subsequently rebuilt. At the beginning of the 1950s it was the exhibitions of the classical modernists which defined the agenda of the Fränkische Galerie.

The story of the present Kunsthalle Nürnberg goes back to 1967 with a conceptual reorientation towards international contemporary art. The institution now started to concentrate on three main areas of work: offering an ambitious program of exhibitions, building up a new municipal art collection and an archive, the Institut für moderne Kunst Nürnberg.

The history of this listed building only roughly outlined here can be read in greater detail in the first publication on the subject, to be presented as part of the 90th birthday celebrations on 12 October 2003.