Bavarian State Picture Galleries, in Munich, museum composed of several collections, the major ones being the Neue Pinakothek, the Alte Pinakothek, and the Schack Gallery. It also embraces, however, the State Gallery of Modern Art, the Olaf Gulbransson Museum in Kurpark, the State Gallery in Neuen Schloss Schleissheim bei München, the Division for Restoration and Scientific Research, and subsidiary galleries in a dozen cities throughout Germany.
The Neue Pinakothek (New Pinakothek), based on private picture collections of the Bavarian kings, is a collection noted for its works of European painting from the 18th through the 20th century and for its sculpture of the 19th–20th centuries. It is housed with the New State Gallery in the House of Art, which was built in 1933–37.
The Alte Pinakothek (Old Pinakothek) is a museum specializing in European painting from the Middle Ages through the late 18th century. Its collection derives from accumulations made by several early electors palatine of Bavaria. The building in which it is now housed is a reconstruction of the 19th-century gallery, by Leo von Klenze, which was destroyed in World War II. It opened in 1957.
The Schack Gallery collection of 19th-century, late Romantic German painting was acquired by the state in 1940 and represents the private collection of Count Adolf Friedrich von Schack. It is housed in the former Prussian Embassy, built in 1907–09.