Opened in 1990, the Frankfurter Ikonen-Museum is one of the leading museums of its kind in Western Europe. The museum was established following a donation of Russian icons by Dr. Schmidt-Voigt to the city. Today, loans from the Museum of Late Antiquity and Byzantine Art in Berlin and other exceptional pieces on loan from private collections comlement the collection.The territory of the Eastern or Orthodox Church and of its venerated images, the icons, extends from Northern Russia across the Balkans, Greece and the Middle East to Ethiopia. The permanent exhibition illustrates the many different styles of icon painting and the context of worship and culture in which icons have played such a prominent role to this day. The temporary exhibitions explore important aspects of the art of icon painting and interesting scientific questions or deal with modern forms of the "icon".