Hessian State Museum (Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt)

Darmstadt only got Block Beuys by accepting an unusual condition from the collector Karl Ströher in 1970: the ensemble had to stay together and stay on show. Joseph Beuys came in person to arrange the seven rooms, down to where each vitrine and blackboard stood, and visitors still walk into the work exactly as he composed it. One coincidence catches out newcomers: the museum's architect Alfred Messel and the Messel Pit whose fossils fill the natural history rooms share a name and nothing else.