The Nationalgalerie is home to one of the world’s most significant collections of twentieth-century art. Thanks to their publication in the online catalogue of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the works from 1945 in the Neue Nationalgalerie are now publicly available to be digitally viewed and researched. The digitised holdings encompass major artistic developments from the second half of the twentieth century. A broad range of artworks have been examined and documented, including paintings, sculptures, and other objects by artists from Germany (including the West and the former East), Western Europe, and the USA, as well as from the formerly socialist states of Eastern Europe. In addition to seminal works of art such as Barnett Newman’s Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue IV (1969-1970) and Francis Bacon’s Portrait of Isabel Rawsthorne Standing in a Street in Soho (1967), the collection also includes works from the Art Informel movement and US colour field painting, 1970s realism, artworks from the GDR, pop art and minimal art, as well as conceptual artworks by the likes of Willi Baumeister, Lee Bontecou, Rebecca Horn, Wolfgang Mattheuer, Henry Moore, Louise Nevelson, Bridget Riley, Mark Rothko, and Gerhard Richter.
Since 2018, the Neue Nationalgalerie has made considerable progress in the scholarly analysis, cataloguing, and digitisation of its holdings. After the Collection Catalogue for Works from 1905 to 1945 was published and made available online in 2021, the museum began the following year to process the works in its collection dating from after 1945. Now, 95 percent of the entire collection managed by the Neue Nationalgalerie, which also encompasses the Museum Berggruen, can be accessed online. Some of the works of twentieth-century art in the collection are currently administered by the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart and have yet to be uploaded to the online catalogue. The opening of the berlin modern exhibition at the Kulturforum is set to bring together the Nationalgalerie’s holdings of twentieth-century art.
The primary focus of this three-year research project dedicated to the analysis, cataloguing, and online publication of the artworks held in the Neue Nationalgalerie’s post-1945 collection was to review and update the key data pertaining to each work, as well as its provenance, any relevant literature, and exhibition history. Moreover, the majority of the works in question are presented in an art-historical context, accompanied by an explanatory text. The catalogue comprises works that entered the collection as acquisitions and gifts, as well as items that were added to the collection as permanent loans from the public sector. Works on loan from private benefactors are not included.
The provenance of each object – in other words, its individual history of origin and successive ownership – was also taken into consideration as part of the analysis. Exploring the provenance of the objects in the museum holdings reveals information about how each work found its way into the museum during Germany’s forty-year division. Following the end of the Second World War, a dual collection structure emerged as a direct result of the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany in the west, the GDR in the east, and the subsequent partitioning of the city of Berlin in 1949. From that point on, the institutions in either half of the city each collected separately, subject to differing political conditions and according to varying specifications and strategies.
The database allows users to trace the varying collection profiles of the different existing Nationalgaleries in East and West Berlin. From the mid-1950s onwards, the Nationalgalerie in East Berlin primarily focused on artists from the GDR, for example the sculptors Fritz Cremer, Waldemar Grzimek, and Gustav Seitz. As the collection progressed, more contemporary art was acquired, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, when the advent of the state policy guideline of “breadth and diversity” allowed institutions to consider and accommodate a broader range of artistic themes and stylistic forms of expression. The art of the 1960s is represented by works by Willi Sitte, Wolfgang Mattheuer, and Werner Tübke, while acquisitions of artworks by Manfred Böttcher (alias Strawalde), Arno Rink, and Walter Libuda exemplify the later years. Information pertaining to the provenance of the artworks indicates that many of the items in the collections were acquired directly from the artists or from their estates, often with funding provided by the Kulturfonds der DDR (Cultural Association of the GDR). There were also a number of donations of artworks to the Nationalgalerie by the government.
The Neue Nationalgalerie, on the other hand, which opened in West Berlin in 1968, endeavoured to establish an international profile for its collection. In addition to artworks by Ernst Wilhelm Nay and Marino Marini, the collection also included works by artists of the Art Informel movement, by Francis Bacon, R. B. Kitaj, Zoltán Keméney and Tom Wesselmann, as well as later works by American colour field painters, the Düsseldorf-based ZERO group and West German artists like Gotthard Graubner, Sigmar Polke, and Gerhard Richter. Furthermore, with the opening of the new gallery building designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the artworks acquired for the Gallery of the Twentieth Century by the Berlin Magistrate during the early post-war years were transferred from the State of Berlin to the Nationalgalerie as a permanent loan. In the years that followed, the State of Berlin continued to support acquisitions for the Nationalgalerie. State and private foundations, large endowments, and the endeavours of the patrons’ club Freunde der Nationalgalerie have also contributed in equal measure to acquisitions for the permanent collection.
Not all of the items in the Nationalgalerie’s collection will be familiar to members of the general public. In fact, the online catalogue contains a number of pieces that in some cases have not been shown in the gallery’s exhibition rooms for decades. The digital publication of the items held in the Neue Nationalgalerie’s collection also renders the collection’s overall history visible. The works published in the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin’s online database can be searched across different collections or within one specific collection using a range of filters and advanced functions, such as the option of searching for specific artists or within particular time periods. Most of the items in the catalogue are presented with visual documentation.
Since November 2023, a selection of works exhibited as part of the presentation of collection holdings titled Extreme Tension: Art Between Politics and Society at the Neue Nationalgalerie have been available online. Detailed information can be accessed in the exhibition rooms via QR code.
One of the museum’s most fundamental duties is the work it conducts both on and with the items in its collection. Now that this additional catalogue, comprising some 1,500 works, has been made available online, the history, diversity, and scope of the Nationalgalerie are at long last even easier to pursue and research. Further groups of works will be processed and added to the online catalogue in the coming years. In this day and age, this kind of comprehensive research and engagement with the museum’s holdings is often only possible with the support of additional project staff and external project funding, which in this case has been generously provided to the Neue Nationalgalerie by the Ernst von Siemens Kunststiftung.
The project has been generously funded by the Ernst von Siemens Kunststiftung.
Project management and editing: Emily Joyce Evans, Maike Steinkamp
Deputy Director and Head of Collection: Joachim Jäger
Data: Sarah Hampel, Johanna Lange, Holger Niederhausen, Eleanora van Rooijen, Evelyn Sutter, Elena Voronovich
Editing: Barbara Delius
Provenance research: Emily Joyce Evans, Sven Haase, Lisa Hackmann, Maike Steinkamp
Object management: Paul Markus, Maria Luna Mignani, Torsten Neitzel
Restoration and Conservation: Ella Dudew, Ina Hausmann, Hana Streicher
With special thanks to Angelika Wesenberg, Michaela Hussein-Wiedemann (Zentralarchiv of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin), Helen Reich (digital museum services), Tobias Schmiegel (legal advisor for the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz), and Michaela Schulze-Bubert (Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz)