MUNSTER.- The Pablo Picasso Graphics Museum, Münster celebrated its 10 anniversary on 7 September 2010. The Museum celebrated its first major anniversary with the special exhibition "Pablo Picasso–In the Artist's Studio", a Museum party on 11 September 2010 and a new name.

"This is a day for stock-taking, and I find that this museum has exceeded all hopes and expectations", said Dr. Rolf Gerlach, President of the Sparkassenverband Westfalen-Lippe and chairman of the board of trustees of the museum. He noted that the Sparkassenstiftung Graphikmuseum, the body responsible for the museum, had achieved one of its primary goals. "We wanted to make the Westfalen-Lippe region more attractive culturally, and the number of visitors shows that we have succeeded."

Gerlach summarized the achievements of the past 10 years: "We look back on 50 special exhibitions relating to Picasso and his contemporaries and see that the number of our annual visitors has increased enormously in the past few years. We are expecting the 800,000th guest this autumn."

Olivier Picasso, the artist's grandson, has a special present for this milestone birthday. Representing the heirs, he is giving the Münster museum a new name. "The Graphics Museum, Picasso announces, "will become the Pablo Picasso Art Museum, Münster“. "It has been a long time since graphic prints were the focus of our exhibitions", is how Professor Dr. Markus Müller explained the new name. "From the very start we have placed our own graphics collection in the creative overall context of other artistic techniques.“

Müller holds out the prospect of a promising programme for the future as well. "We are already making plans for as far ahead as 2014. In the next few years, with Matisse, Chagall und van Gogh we will have a number of representatives of modern art as guests to keep Picasso company."

The Pablo Picasso Graphics Museum, Münster was established in 2000 by a foundation initiative in which the Sparkassenverband Westfalen-Lippe, the WestLB AG, the Westfälische Provinzial Versicherung and the collector couple Jutta and Gert Huizinga joined forces. The Museum is the home of a collection of 800 Picasso lithographs that is unique in the world. In 2001 the Museum acquired another complete series of prints by the Spaniard, the Suite Vollard. A second foundation within the Sparkassenstiftung was established in 2002: The Classen Collection with painter's books by Picasso, Matisse, Miró and other companions and contemporaries of Picasso. Two permanent loans from the Sparkasse Münsterland Ost with works by Georges Braque and Marc Chagall were added to the holdings in 2004 and 2008.