17.10.2025
Neue Nationalgalerie
On 17 October 2025, the topping-out ceremony for berlin modern, the new museum building for the Neue Nationalgalerie at the Kulturforum, was celebrated with participating construction workers in the presence of Wolfram Weimer, German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
The speakers, including Marion Ackermann, president of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (SPK, Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation), Klaus Biesenbach, director of the Neue Nationalgalerie, Christian Kaiser, chief financial officer and head of Federal Construction Management Baden-Württemberg, and architect Jacques Herzog, emphasised the unifying power of the new museum for the Kulturforum. Accompanied by musicians from the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the almost two-and-a-half-metre-high topping-out wreath was hoisted into place. The ceremony featured a performance of Mirror Piece by American artist Joan Jonas.
berlin modern will be a home for 20th-century art in all its forms. It is being built because only small sections of the Neue Nationalgalerie’s world-famous collection can currently be displayed. The new museum building, designed by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron in collaboration with Vogt Landscape Architects, will reorganise the Kulturforum as an urban space with a unique interplay of various cultural and scholarly institutions.
A tour of the Mies van der Rohe building and the future Neue Nationalgalerie premises will allow visitors to explore the art – and therefore also the history – of the 20th century in all its many forms and facets – from German Expressionism and International Modernism to Pop Art, Conceptual Art, and Minimal Art, as well as architecture, photography, film and design. Works from the Kunstbibliothek (Art Library) and the Kupferstichkabinett (Museum of Prints and Drawings) will be displayed in their own dedicated spaces. berlin modern will also present art from the Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch Collection (around 160 works), the Marx Collection (almost 200 works, currently still at Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart) and the Marzona Collection (around 300 works).
The completion of construction planned for 2029 will be followed by the museum’s initial installation and the mounting of its inaugural exhibition. This will involve relocating 5,000 works from the Neue Nationalgalerie, 30,000 from the Kupferstichkabinett, and numerous others from the Kunstbibliothek, as well as the Marx Collection from Hamburger Bahnhof. The plan is to use the building as an art venue during this installation phase, while gradually opening the structure to visitors in its entirety.