Wilhelm Busch Museum

The Wilhelm Busch Museum (German: Deutsches Museum für Karikatur und Zeichenkunst Wilhelm Busch) is a museum in Hanover, Germany. Named after the caricaturist Wilhelm Busch, it displays contemporary comic art, illustrations and drawings.

It is located in the Georgenpalais, a palace dating from around 1780 in the Georgengarten, part of the Herrenhausen Gardens. The museum is run by the Wilhelm Busch Society.

The museum's origins go back to 1937, when the Wilhelm Busch Society (formed 1930) opened the first museum devoted to the Lower Saxon artist Busch in the centre of Hanover. The museum was destroyed by Allied bombs in 1943, but by then the artworks had been removed for safekeeping. The museum first reopened in the Wallmodenpalais in 1950, with an extensive presentation of the works of Busch and the first exhibition of caricatures.

Today the Wilhelm Busch Society has around 2,500 members in and outside Germany. Since 2002 the museum has also been supported by the Association of Sponsors (Verein der Förderer des Wilhelm-Busch-Museums). The city of Hanover allows the use of the historic exhibition building free of charge, and also makes an annual sponsorship contribution.

The museum owns the world's largest Wilhelm Busch collection, plus an internationally significant collection of four centuries of satirical art, including works by Honoré Daumier, James Gillray, Francisco de Goya, Thomas Theodor Heine, William Hogarth, Ronald Searle, Jean-Jacques Sempé, Tomi Ungerer, and A. Paul Weber. The collection has grown significantly since around 2000, with new acquisitions including 700 Napoleon caricatures, works by the Austrian caricaturist Erich Sokol, the estate of the draughtsman Volker Kriegel, and more recently that of Friedrich Karl Waechter.