The first museum in Germany to be endowed by a bourgeois citizen was founded in 1815 by Frankfurt banker and merchant J. F. Städel; today, the Städel Museum’s internationally renowned collection provides a unique perspective of 700 years of European art history, from the Middle Ages to the present day. Countless initiatives, outstanding gifts, important acquisitions, and enthusiastic patronage have allowed the collection to expand to a great extent, especially in the area of contemporary art. In order to make these treasures accessible to the public, the Städel Museum will open a new wing in the winter of 2011-12, which will practically double the size of the museum’s gallery space. To celebrate this new and re-opening, the entire exhibition at the Städel Museum will be presented in book form. The works—most of them in full-page plates—will be presented in detail and as part of a thematic overview, in three volumes (Old Masters, Modernism, contemporary art).When NEO RAUCH was a student of Arno Rink’s at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig, Germany was still a divided country. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, his large, cryptic paintings conquered the art world by storm and Rauch became a trailblazer for the New Leipzig School, as well as its most famous representative. His paintings added elements of Pop Art, comics, and advertising graphics to figural painting.