The Neue Nationalgalerie is a museum dedicated to 20th-century art. Due to space limitations, the extensive 20th-century holdings from the Nationalgalerie collection can only be shown in part. Works from the second half of the 20th century are currently on view in the Zerreißprobe (Extreme Tension) exhibition. An additional building, which will expand the Neue Nationalgalerie, is under construction.
After nearly fifty years of use since its opening in 1968, the Neue Nationalgalerie was extensively refurbished and modernised from 2015 until 2021.
The Neue Nationalgalerie was the last major project completed by the internationally famous architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. His long-term preoccupation with creating pillar-free, open spaces culminated in the design of the museum’s glass hall. The architect died shortly after the building’s inauguration. With its steel roof and gracefully austere architectural forms, the Neue Nationalgalerie is an icon of modernism and a testament to a visionary 20th-century architect.
When it was built, the museum was located at the edge of what was then West Berlin. It was constructed as one of the vital cornerstones of the Kulturforum, which was planned by another great architect of the post-war period, Hans Scharoun. The reunification of Germany and the ensuing new structures built around Potsdamer Platz provided the Neue Nationalgalerie with its current surroundings in the city centre.
The history of the Neue Nationalgalerie is inextricably linked to the political division of Germany and the city of Berlin after the Second World War. The Nationalgalerie’s collection, originally exhibited at the Museumsinsel Berlin and later, in the 1920s, also shown at the Kronprinzen-Palais on the boulevard Unter den Linden, was initially managed by the Municipality of Greater Berlin in the early post-war years. The 1949 founding of two German states with opposed political systems marked the end of a unified collection.
While the East Berlin Nationalgalerie remained in its original building, there was initially no space available for the collection in West Berlin. Beginning in the late 1940s, the West Berlin authorities took strides to rebuild the collection by setting up a city-run “Gallery of the 20th Century”. Additionally, part of the Nationalgalerie’s original collection of 19th-century artwork, located in West Germany after the war, was transferred to the newly established Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation), founded in 1957.
As these two art collections were to be merged, Mies van der Rohe was commissioned in 1962 to design a new museum building to display the 20th-century collection in West Berlin. In September 1965, the architect came to the city for the laying of the cornerstone. Two years later, he also attended the most spectacular construction stage: the hydraulic raising into place of the gigantic steel roof.
The building opened on 15 September 1968 and bore the name Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery). Its name signalled the idea of departing from the old and beginning a new chapter – the cultural rebirth of West Germany. The building’s architectural structure has remained virtually unchanged ever since. However, the urban setting in which it is located has undergone radical changes: the Staatsbibliothek (Berlin State Library) emerged on the opposite side of Potsdamer Straße at almost the same time as the Neue Nationalgalerie. It was followed by the Kammermusiksaal (Chamber Music Hall) erected adjacent to the earlier Philharmonie structure. These buildings were joined over time by a cluster of museums that form the Kulturforum and, after German reunification, by the urban redevelopment of Potsdamer Platz.
