21.12.2012
Museum Berggruen
Yesterday, the building at Spandauer Damm 17, which originally served as the commandant's quarters for the Prussian military, was officially handed over by the Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning to the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. The handover paves the way for the immanent expansion of the Museum Berggruen, when the building adjoining its current site will open to the public on 15 March, in under just two months' time. With its impressive collection of works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Paul Klee, and Alberto Giacometti, the Museum Berggruen stands as one of the most important museums of modern art in Germany.
The Museum Berggruen is itself relatively new: it first opened in 1996 and has been housed in the western, Stüler-designed building opposite Schloss Charlottenburg. It will be joined to the old commandant's quarters by a glass walkway. The interior of the new wing is being redesigned by Kuehn Malvezzi Architects to bring it in line with a modern gallery's needs. The new wing will provide an additional 800 square metres of exhibition space. The museum will thus be able to present works from its collection without losing the intimate atmosphere for which it is noted. The permanent collection, owned by the Nationalgalerie, will be enriched by a range of important loans from the Berggruen family. A lot more space will thus be made available for the display of the museum's core highlight: the extensive suites of works by Picasso and Klee. The freed-up rooms in the entrance area will now accommodate rotating shows on the history of the collection. A newly created garden at the back of the two adjoining properties will be made accessible to both public and local residents alike. The garden and the museum's reopening are guaranteed to heighten the appeal of Charlottenburg museum district as a whole.
The collection is named after the man who created it: the important gallery owner and collector, Heinz Berggruen (1914-2007), who lived and worked in Paris after the war. A total of 165 works from his exquisite collection have been in the possession of the Nationalgalerie since 2000.