Like all art on paper, the holdings of the Wallraf’s Department of Drawings and Prints must, on conservation grounds, be kept as ‘hidden treasures’ in boxes and cupboards.

But what is the point of art if it is to be kept hidden away? What role does a department of drawings and prints have in an age characterized not least by a deluge of digital images? What sort of future does it have if its collecting remit does not extend into the present day? How important still is connoisseurship, the ability to distinguish real from fake, or indeed to identify long extinct graphic techniques? And what do traditional themes such as Greek and Roman mythology and the Christian salvation story still have to say to us today?

The Wallraf’s Department of Drawings and Prints provides answers to these and other core questions of museum practice in regularly changing exhibitions. The department is located in the middle of the Baroque section on the second floor of the building.