“Pergamon. Panorama of the Ancient Metropolis” wins bronze from the Art Directors Club

15.06.2012
Pergamonmuseum

In May the Staatliche Museen were able to celebrate with Yadegar Asisi and his team after they received one of the most important design awards in the world: at the 48th Art Directors Club (ADC) award ceremony, the design for the special exhibition 'PERGAMON - Panorama of the Ancient Metropolis', still on show at the Pergamon Museum, won bronze: the highest distinction possible in the category of 'communication in space, temporary exhibitions'.

As a professional association of leading art directors, the ADC holds its competition each year. At this year's congress in mid-May, some 6600 works were evaluated by 338 judges, headed by Hartmut Esslinger. Of that number, 223 projects were awarded gold, silver or bronze. By winning bronze, exhibition architect Yadegar Asisi and art director Mathias Thiel clinched the highest distinction available to them in their category.

The major exhibition on the ancient city of Pergamon, featuring an array of previously unshown exhibits from the Collection of Classical Antiquities at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, is on display for just a few more months until 30 September. The excavations in Pergamon conducted by the Berlin museums were one of the most successful endeavours ever undertaken in the history of German classical scholarship. The most important find from these digs, the altar reconstructed in the Pergamon Museum, is now one of the most famous exhibits on the Museum Island Berlin (itself a UNESCO World Heritage Site) and attracts well over a million German and international visitors to the museum each year.

Accompanying the museum's exhibition, the newly designed monumental 360° panoramic view of the ancient city, created by Berlin-based artist Yadegar Asisi, erected on the museum's forecourt. A 25 x 100 m large photorealistic panoramic view, created under the direction of the Berlin artist Yadegar Asisi, brings the ancient culture, architecture and public goings-on in an ancient Greek-Roman city to life. Sound effects and a day-and-night simulation gives the feeling they have travelled back in time to the ancient city of Pergamon.