04.12.2010
Pergamonmuseum
An exhibition presented by the National Museums' Museum of the Ancient Near East, on show from 28 January 2011 to 14 August 2011 at the Pergamonmuseum
Time slot tickets went on sale for the first time today for 'The Tell Halaf Adventure', an exhibition due to run from 28 January to 14 August 2011, at the Pergamonmuseum on the Museum Island, Berlin. As of today tickets are available online at www.gerettete-goetter.de as well as from all ticket offices at the National Museums in Berlin. The tickets grant the holder admission to the Pergamonmuseum for the time selected, without visitors having to wait in the main queue.
The exhibition 'The Tell Halaf Adventure' unveils to the public the stone sculptures that Max Freiherr von Oppenheim unearthed from 1911 to 1913 at Tell Halaf, a hillside settlement in north-east Syria, and which have just undergone nine years of painstaking restoration. Oppenheim's spectacular find was brought to Berlin in 1927 and exhibited from 1930 onwards in a converted factory building. In the Second World War an aerial bomb gutted the private museum. The monumental sculptures on display at the time shattered into thousands of pieces, as people tried in vain to extinguish the conflagration. The fragments were swept up and stored in the vaults of the Pergamonmuseum. Thanks to generous support from the Sal. Oppenheim banking house, the Alfred Freiherr von Oppenheim Foundation and the German Research Foundation, restoration work was able to commence, some 70 years after their destruction, on the sculptures, then deemed irretrievably lost, from the mass of over 27,000 fragments. Now, thanks to this unparalleled restoration project, the public can come face to face with the 3000 year-old vast stone gods, animals and mythological creatures once again.
The exhibition on Tell Halaf is the first of three major shows due to be held by the National Museums in Berlin on the Museum Island in 2011. From 25 August to 20 November 2011 'Renaissance Faces. Masterpieces of Italian Portraiture' will go on show at the Bode Museum, while 'Pergamon. Panorama of the Ancient City' will be on display at the Pergamonmuseum from October to September 2011.
Admission for the exhibition and the Pergamonmuseum as a whole costs €12 (concessions €6). Tickets are available over the Internet, at www.gerettete-goetter.de and at the ticket offices of the National Museums themselves. Bookings for tours can also be placed as of today. More details are available on +49(0)30 266 - 42 42 42 (lines open Mon-Fri: 9:00-16:00), as well as at www.gerettete-goetter.de.