The Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery) at the Kulturforum is a museum for

modern art Modern art includes artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the styles and philosophies of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the tradi ...

in Berlin, with its main focus on the early 20th century. It is part of the National Gallery of the Berlin State Museums. The museum building and its sculpture gardens were designed by

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ( ; ; born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies; March 27, 1886August 17, 1969) was a German-American architect. He was commonly referred to as Mies, his surname. Along with Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Frank Lloyd ...

and opened in 1968. The gallery closed in 2015 for renovation. The work, by David Chipperfield Architects, was completed in 2021, and the museum reopened in August 2021 with an exhibition of works by American sculptor Alexander Calder.

Collection

The collection features a number of unique highlights of modern 20th-century art. Particularly well represented are

Cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...

Expressionism Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

, the Bauhaus and

Surrealism Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...

. The collection owns masterpieces of artists like Pablo Picasso, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner,

Joan Miró Joan Miró i Ferrà ( , , ; 20 April 1893 – 25 December 1983) was a Catalan painter, sculptor and ceramicist born in Barcelona. A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró, was established in his native city of Barcelona i ...

, Wassily Kandinsky and

Barnett Newman Barnett Newman (January 29, 1905 – July 4, 1970) was an American artist. He has been critically regarded as one of the major figures of abstract expressionism, and one of the foremost color field painters. His paintings explore the sense o ...

. The design of the building, despite its large size, allows for the display of only a small part of the collection, and the displays are therefore changed at intervals.

Architecture

Dimensions, specifications and materials

The plan of the Neue Nationalgalerie is divided into two distinct stories. The upper story serves as an entrance hall as well as the primary special exhibit gallery, totaling of space. It is elevated from street level and only accessible by three flights of steps. Though it only comprises a small portion of the total gallery space, the exhibition pavilion stands boldly as the building's primary architectural expression. Eight cruciform columns, two on each length placed so as to avoid corners, support a square pre-stressed steel roof plate thick and painted black. An cantilever allows for ample space between the gallery's glazed façade and eight supporting columns. Mies' office studied this cantilever extensively in various scaled models in order to ensure its structural stability as well as the seeming flatness of the roof plate. The floor-to-ceiling height reaches , and the space is laid out on a square dimensional grid. Black anodized aluminum "egg crates" fit within the grid house lighting fixtures, with air ducts suspended above. The lower story serves primarily as housing for the gallery's permanent collection, though it also includes a library, offices, and a shop and café, and totals about of space. It is three-quarters below ground so as to allow for safe storage of the artwork. Its sole glazed façade looks out on the museum's sloping sculpture garden and provides ample indirect interior lighting. A rooftop plaza further extends the museum's exhibition space.

Contemporaneous projects

In 1956, José M. Bosch, President of Ron Bacardí y Compañía approached Mies to commission the design of a new office space. He was particularly interested in a very open plan, and the relatively simple idea Mies came up with involved a square roof plate supported on each side by two columns. Though initial structural challenges had to be dealt with, the resulting pavilion typology became integral to Mies' architectural lexicon, in many ways the epitome of his universal conception of space. The Bacardí Building was abandoned in September 1960 due to general political unrest in Cuba, but at the same time, two other museum commissions were brought to Mies' office. Georg Schaefer, a wealthy industrialist living in Schweinfurt approached Mies about the construction of a museum for his nineteenth-century art collection during the summer of 1960. A modest initial plan was drawn for the structure, but later that year Mies decided to reconfigure the unbuilt Bacardí project to fit Schaefer's program as he wished to see it built. Consequently, a scaled-down model of the Bacardí project this time rendered in steel rather than concrete was created. In March 1961, Mies also received a letter from the Senator for Building and Housing in Berlin, inviting him to build what was to be called the Neue Nationalgalerie, an exhibition space for the state's collection of early twentieth-century art. The two museum projects, though slightly different in scale, where to be essentially identical in form, both a version in steel of the original Barcardí design. Though the Schweinfurt project never came to fruition, the reductive exercise of continual reconfiguration allowed for the perfection of Mies' expression in Berlin, and the Neue Nationalgalerie remains as the sole built form of the initial tripartite conception.

Aesthetic importance

Much of Mies' syntactical development throughout the three building progression leading up to the Neue Nationalgalerie was prefigured in an earlier project for a Museum for a Small City. This project was published in a special May 1943 edition of '' Architectural Forum''. In his publication, Mies describes a seemingly floating roof plane, suspended above a single clear-span space punctuated by equidistant columns. This project is now seen as a significant move on Mies' part toward the alleviation of interior space by both defining and minimizing structural enclosure, thus joining exterior and interior space in a meaningful way. The structure itself, a composite of little more than ground plane, support and roof, thus becomes the building. The aesthetic importance of the clear-span was directly related to Mies' conception of museum space in general, a "defining, rather than confining space". The completely open nature of the plan also serves to eliminate the barrier between art and community, simultaneously breaking down the reverence enacted by severely partitioned spaces and inviting interaction between viewer and art. The overall aesthetic affect is thus one of vitalizing liberation. This infinitely transformative capability and universality is also seen in Mies' buildings from the intervening years, namely the Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois, and Crown Hall of the Illinois Institute of Technology campus. Various commentators have recognized the structure's ties to classical building, seeing it as a modern temple whose monumental simplicity evinces the immense skill behind its design and conception.

Criticism

The ability of clearly articulated external structures to alleviate façades and create large-scale universal spaces required certain boldness on the part of the client. The ineffable expression of the Neue Nationalgalerie's entrance pavilion had certain logistical downsides. Its smooth granite flooring reflects the warm natural light that floods the space, creating hazy shadow and making curatorial efforts notoriously complicated. The singular expression of the pavilion space also relegated the lower story to a secondary position, presenting further difficulties for the display of artwork involving a lack of natural lighting and relatively pedestrian layout of viewing space. When asked later to renovate and expand the building's lower story, Mies refused, as to do so would destroy the perfect proportions of the temple above. He originally conceived of the entrance pavilion as a place for very large works, allowing for unencumbered visual interaction and for use of the piece as space element in itself. An early collage included in the May 1943 '' Architectural Forum'' article about Museum for a Small City includes Picasso's '' Guernica'', along with other large, plane-like paintings. Yet smaller works had to be shown on moveable freestanding walls or hanging partitions, making a curator's ability to effectively differentiate spaces difficult.

David Chipperfield renovation

Having had no thorough modernization since its inauguration, the Neue Nationalgalerie required upgrades to its air-conditioning, lighting, security, accessibility, visitor facilities and the behind-the-scenes infrastructure for moving art. In 2012 it was announced that British architect

David Chipperfield Sir David Alan Chipperfield, (born 18 December 1953) is an English architect. He established David Chipperfield Architects in 1985. His major works include the River and Rowing Museum in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire (1989–1998); the Museum ...

would oversee a major renovation of the building. In a non-competitive selection process common for public contracts in Germany, his firm was chosen for the contract out of 24 architectural firms based on a two-stage negotiation process. Originally planned for €101 million, the €140 million renovation project started in 2015 and was originally expected to last three years, during which time the museum was closed. Original building elements, such as handrails and shelves, were removed, restored and reinstalled in their previous locations. Archival material dating from the construction at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, helped the architects remain true to Mies’s design. Meanwhile, the structural framework of the roof, which rests on eight steel beams, and the glass facade was restored.

Permanent art installations

The Neue Nationalgalerie's ceiling, constructed as a grid of black-painted steel beams, has been used as an exhibit surface in itself for ''Installation for the Neue Nationalgalerie'', an installation of long lines of

LCD A liquid-crystal display (LCD) is a flat-panel display or other electronically modulated optical device that uses the light-modulating properties of liquid crystals combined with polarizers. Liquid crystals do not emit light directly but in ...

displays by artist Jenny Holzer in 2001, which continuously scrolled abstract patterns down their length. The Neue Nationalgalerie's terrace provides a particularly prominent space for large-scale pieces of sculpture from the 20th century. Permanently installed sculptures include ''Gudari'' (1957) by Eduardo Chillida, ''Polis'' (1968) by Joannis Avramidis, the kinetic metal sculpture ''Vier Vierecke im Geviert'' (1969) by George Rickey, ''Three Way Piece No.2: The Archer'' (1964–65) by

Henry Moore Henry Spencer Moore (30 July 1898 – 31 August 1986) was an English artist. He is best known for his semi- abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. As well as sculpture, Moore produced ...

, ''Têtes et Queue'' (1965) by Alexander Calder, and ''Berlin Block Charlie Chaplin'' (1978) by Richard Serra. In 2003, with the permission of the Barnett Newman Foundation, a fourth edition of the sculpture ''Broken Obelisk'' (1963) by

was cast and temporarily installed in front of the museum. In 2011,

Thomas Schütte Thomas Schütte (born 16 November 1954) is a German contemporary artist. He sculpts, creates architectural designs, and draws. He lives and works in Düsseldorf. Education From 1973 to 1981 Schütte studied art at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf al ...

's work ''Vater Staat'' (2010) was donated by Nicolas Berggruen and installed on the terrace. Many other pieces of sculpture - by artists from

Auguste Renoir Pierre-Auguste Renoir (; 25 February 1841 – 3 December 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that " ...

to Ulrich Rückriem - are on permanent display in the museum's garden.

Directors

* 1967–1974:

Werner Haftmann Werner may refer to: People * Werner (name), origin of the name and people with this name as surname and given name Fictional characters * Werner (comics), a German comic book character * Werner Von Croy, a fictional character in the ''Tomb Rai ...

* 1974–1975:

Wieland Schmied Wieland Schmied (5 February 1929 – 22 April 2014) was an Austrian art historian and critic, curator, literary scholar and writer. He was professor of art history at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich since 1986 and its rector from 1988 unt ...

* 1975–1997:

Dieter Honisch Dieter or dieter may refer to: * A person committed to dieting People Dieter is a German given name (), a short form of Dietrich, from ''theod+ric'' "people ruler", see Theodoric. Given name *Dieter Althaus (born 1958), German politician ...

* 1999–2008: Peter-Klaus Schuster * 2008–2020:

Udo Kittelmann Udo is a masculine given name. It may refer to: People Medieval era * Udo of Neustria, 9th century nobleman *Udo (Obotrite prince) (died 1028) *Udo (archbishop of Trier) (c. 1030 – 1078) *Lothair Udo II, Margrave of the Nordmark (c. 1025 – ...

* 2020:-2022

Joachim Jäger Joachim (; ''Yəhōyāqīm'', "he whom Yahweh has set up"; ; ) was, according to Christian tradition, the husband of Saint Anne and the father of Mary, the mother of Jesus. The story of Joachim and Anne first appears in the Biblical apocryphal ...

* Since January 1, 2022: Klaus Biesenbach

Images

Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin - von oben.jpg, A view from above Berlin Neue Nationalgalerie asv2021-11 img2.jpg, Entrance side with ''Three Way Piece No. 2: The Archer'' Neue Nationalgalerie P7130065.JPG, Interior view Stamps of Germany (Berlin) 1986, MiNr 753.jpg, German stamp from 1986

References

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External links

Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
{{Authority control Buildings and structures completed in 1968 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe buildings Art museums and galleries in Berlin Modern art museums in Germany Modernist architecture in Germany Art museums established in 1968 1968 establishments in Germany