Two years before this death, Joseph Beuys (1921 – 1986) himself installed his monumental work The End of the 20th Century in the Munich Haus der Kunst, arranging 44 blocks of basalt into an impressively fluid und moving formation. Without a doubt, the work is one of his most significant creations.

Moving this installation to the newly opened Pinakothek der Moderne in January 2002 not only presented curators and conservators with massive technical problems, it also gave rise to the question of whether an installation put in place by the artist himself in a location selected by the latter in person should be moved at all.

When the Pinakothek der Moderne opened in September 2002 a key work from the late 20th century had found itself new home.