Collection of Classical Antiquities at the Altes Museum

Antikensammlung im Alten Museum

Greek and Roman art and sculptures can be found in the Altes Museum. The main highlights, the art of the Etruscans, will go on show when major restoration work on the building has been completed. Until then an exhibition of Greek works of art is open to the public on the newly designed main floor of the building. This thematically arranged exhibition includes stone sculptures, clay and bronze figures, friezes, vases, gold jewellery and silverware. Three information displays provide details on additional topics such as Greek myths, ancient city culture and the archaeological sites investigated by the Berlin museums.

National Gallery in the Old National Gallery

The Alte Nationalgalerie is regarded as a comprehensive collection of art of the era between the French Revolution and the First World War, between Classicism and Secessions. The harmonious relationship between the museum building and its collection is unique: designed under the auspices of Heinrich Strack according to plans by August Stüler, the gallery was built in the years 1867 to 1876: the collection it houses today, one of the most beautiful of its kind, originates from the same century. Hence, a tour through the museum offers a profound insight into the art of the 19th century.

Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection in the Neues Museum

The Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection has a chance to present itself on a scale never shown until now, with over 2 500 exhibits on display in the Neues Museum's northern wing over three floors, covering 3600m².
The conception and design of the display collection affords a comprehensive insight into the continuity and changes of Ancient Egyptian culture over four millennia as well as the cultural history of Ancient Sudan. The tomb architecture and relief art of the Old Kingdom are revealed in a unique way through the reconstruction of several chambers of offering. As well as illustrating various key cultural aspects, such as the cult of death and the gods, royalty and everyday life, the scholarly history of Egyptologyitself is also presented and outlined in depth for the first time. In the "Library of Antiquity", the Papyrus Collection presents a selection of highly significant texts and literary works taken from the culture of writing that stretches all the way from Ancient Egypt down to Late Antiquity.

Presented by:
Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection

We Are One People

Marking the 20th anniversary of German unity, this exhibition sees a range of medals go on display that were created in the momentous years of 1989 and 1990. Various artists from both the East and West of the country had their impressions of moving occurrences in German history cast in metal in the immediate aftermath of the events of 1989.

It is quite rare for a pivotal moment in a country's history to be so emphatically and representatively captured for and by the art of that particular country. The exhibition will be first go on show from 19 March to 9 April 2010 in Speyer, in the Stadt- und Kreissparkasse bank, before being on permanent display in the Bode Museum from 17 April 2010. The first stage of the exhibition was officially opened by Bernhard Vogel, the long-serving minister-president of the states of Rheinland-Pfalz and Thüringen.

Presented by:

Numismatic Collection

Sculpture Collection

The Sculpture Collection possesses works from the Early Middle Ages to the late eighteenth century, from the German-speaking countries, France, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain. Italian sculpture is a particular area of emphasis in the collection. Major medieval pieces, such as the Madonna by Presbyter Martinus and the Man of Sorrows by Giovanni Pisano, lead on to masterpieces of the early Renaissance. Glazed terracottas by Luca della Robbia, Donatello's Pazzi Madonna and the portrait busts by Desiderio da Settignano, Francesco Laurana and Mino da Fiesole are all highlights of the collection.

Late Gothic German sculpture is another prominent section with works by Hans Multscher, Tilman Riemenschneider, Hans Brüggemannn, Nicolaus Gerhaert van Leyden and Hans Leinberger. Statuettes made of alabaster, boxwood and ivory represent sculpture of the German Renaissance and Baroque periods. The monumental wooden sculptures of knight-saints Zürn dating from the Thirty Years War are particularly impressive works of craftsmanship.

The museum also possesses some excellent examples of architectural sculpture. The gallery from the church in Gröningen is a major work of the German Romanesque period. Sculptures by Andreas Schlüter and the six figures of generals, which were created for the former Wilhelmplatz, represent Berlin sculpture of the 17th and 18th century. Rococo and early and late Classicism in Germany and France are represented with works by Ignaz Günther, Joseph Anton Feuchtmayer, Edme Bouchardon, and Jean-Antoine Houdon.

The study collection of the newly opened Bode Museum displays numerous pieces of Italian sculpture by different schools, mainly from the period of the Renaissance. They include the bronze head of Lodovico Gonzaga, the head fragment of the "Princess of Naples", and the bust of Flora which, much-debated regarding its position within the history of art, has recently been redated. Focal points are the 15th century Madonna reliefs made of clay, stucco and cartapesta, centred around a madonna composition by Jacopo Sansovino, one of the most important works of its kind in the 16th century, as well as a number of fragments of first-class sculptures shown for the first time since the end of the Second World War.

As a particular highlight of contemporary state support, the museum's collection is being supplemented for three years with thirty works from the "Kunstkammer Würth", the collection of the industrialist, art collector and patron Reinhold Würth. Next to a 17th century cabinet, the Kunstkammer mainly contains small ivory sculptures from the 17th and 18th centuries by artists such as Leonhard Kern, Zacharias Hegewald, Joachim Henne, Adam Lenckhardt, Paul Egell or Christoph Daniel Schenck. Moreover, the presentation includes a precious 17th century amber altar, a silver piece showing Diana on a stag, partially gilt by Paulus Ättinger, as well as turned ivories.

Presented by:

Sculpture Collection and Museum of Byzantine Art

Museum of Byzantine Art at the Bode-Museum

The Museum of Byzantine Art owns a first-class collection of art works and utility objects from late Antiquity and the Byzantine period. It is the only one of its kind within Germany. The focus of the collection is on art of the Western Roman and Byzantine Empires dating from the third to the fifteenth century. Additionally, there are a large number of post-Byzantine icons and small art works.

St. Florian versus Roter Hahn - Zur Geschichte der Zehlendorfer Feuerwehr

The History of Fire Department of the district “Zehlendorf”

Music Ethnology

Since November 2007, the Department of Music Ethnology of the Ethnological Museum is being presented in a newly designed exhibition.

The phonogram archive comprises more than 16,000 original recordings and around 2,000 shellac records from all kinds of regions of the world.

Collection of South, Southeast and Central Asian Art

The Collection of South, Southeast and Central Asian Art houses one of the most important collections worldwide of art from the Indo-Asian cultural area, from the 4th millenium BC to the present. This extensive geographic region includes, next to India, the regions Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, the Autonomous Regions Tibet and Xinjiang of the People's Republic of China, the Southeast Asian countries of Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, as well as the Indonesian Islands.

The Collection

The formative, and almost exclusive, influence on Indian art is religion. The three main religions - Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism - are represented in the Collection of South, Southeast and Central Asian Art in the form of outstanding stone sculptures and reliefs, bronze works and terracotta pieces. With regard to the rich iconography of images of deities, the museum's collection may well be the most sophisticated outside of India. The oldest art works it contains come from Buddhist and Hindu religious buildings of the first centuries AC. The collection's Jain art and the largest part of its Hindu sculpture, on the other hand, originate from temples of the classic period or the middle ages, through to around the 13th century. As part of the redesign of the exhibition space in the year 2000, architectural features of the round stupa and the rectangular temple - the two central units of Indian religious architecture - were integrated into the layout.

As from the 12th century, Islam joined the other main religions in India. During the period of Islamic rule in India, Indian craft prospered. Metal work, ceramics, wood carvings, ivory and jade works, as well as precious textiles bear testimony to this heyday. Gorgeously coloured miniatures from the Mughal period round off the exhibition. Within the field of book art, the museum distinguishes itself through its comprehensive collection of paintings from all four of India's main religions.

The art of the Himalayan countries of Nepal and Tibet is represented by fabric painting (so-called Thangkas), wood sculptures and bronzes. The demon-like gods of protection of the 18th century are characteristic of late Tantric Buddhism.

The Southeast Asian collection includes stone and bronze figures, glazed clay reliefs, as well as grave finds from prehistoric times (3rd to 1st millenium BC), ceramic vessels, and bronze or glass jewellery.

The heart of the collection, and at the same time the architectural focus of the exhibition, is the world-famous "Turfan collection", named after the first of the four Royal Prussian expeditions to the northern Silk Road, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, People's Republic of China between 1902 and 1914. The murals, the paintings on fabric and paper, and the clay and wood sculptures of the 3rd to 13th centuries for the most part originate from Buddhist temples. The focal point of this section is the full-scale reconstruction of a square temple decorated with original murals from Cave 123 at the oasis of Kucha.

History

Already in the 19th century, then still under the direction of the Museum für Völkerkunde (Ethnological Museum), Indo-Asian cultural objects were collected systematically. It was not until the period between 1900 and the outbreak of the First World War, however, that more prominent art works were acquired by the Berlin museums. This coincided with a growing interest in Indian culture and, as a result, significant German contributions to research in the field. Between 1902 and 1914, the indologist Albert Grünwedel and the turkologist Albert von LeCoq, researchers of the museums' Indian Department (an independent branch since 1904), carried out four expeditions to the northern Silk Road. They returned to Berlin with unique objects - known as the "Turfan collection" - which, for the first time, offered a vivid impression of the religious and cultural life of the far-away regions of eastern Central Asia in the first millenium AC.

While the First World War had already forestalled the continuation of the Silk Road expeditions, the Second World War caused extensive losses in the Museum of Indian Art's collection (over 2,100 inventory numbers are still listed as artworks lost during the war, many numbers including more than one object). In 1956/57, objects confiscated in the American and British zones of occupation were returned to the collection. A number of art works which the Red Army had taken to the Soviet Union after the end of the war made their way into the Grassi Museum in Leipzig in 1978, and from there they returned to Berlin in 1990. In 2002, the storerooms of the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg revealed around 20 percent of the missing parts of the collection.

In 1963, the Indian Department, previously part of the ethnological collection, was given independent status as an art museum, doing justice to the importance of Indo-Asian high cultures within world cultural heritage. With this step, the first independent research institute for Indo-Asian art was created in Germany.

After the building of a new museum complex at Berlin-Dahlem, the Museum für Indische Kunst was able to present its collections in their own exhibition space for the first time. Since then, new acquisitions, gifts and loans from private collections have been added. Since the year 2000, the newly designed permanent exhibition presents around 400 exhibits from a collection including a total of nearly 20,000 objects. The integration of elements of Indo-Asian religious architecture, the round stupa and the rectangular temple, as well as the use of grey quartzite imported from India, lends the exhibition space an atmosphere of the lands of the art's origin.

Presented by:

Asian Art Museum

German History in Images and Artefacts from Two Millenia

The show offers a sweeping survey of two thousand years of German history and opens a new chapter in the museum’s own history. Eight thousand selected exhibits from the Museum’s own collections, many of them unique historical artefacts, will convey a lively and attractive impression of events past.

The exhibition covers 7,500 m² and is divided into two parts. The period from the first century AD to the abdication of the Kaiser in 1918 is presented on the first floor, while the ground floor houses the sections relating to the Weimar Republic, the Nazi era, the Cold War period and the two German states up to the withdrawal of the Allies in 1994.
The exhibits are objects of significance from almost all fields of the historical legacy: documents, paintings and other works of art, books, posters, textiles, furniture, machines and a wide variety of everyday objects, to name but a few. In the methodology of the permanent exhibition these exhibits serve as more than mere illustrations of the historical events. They are presented, explained and placed in their wider context as pieces of history in their own right, focusing on their specific character as historical evidence. This approach produces a unique form of reconstruction of historical relationships and processes, one that speaks directly to the viewer. Rather than presenting a German-centred view, the exhibition consistently places German history in its European context, giving consideration to the many different forms of exchange and political and cultural networking with neighbouring states.

Numerous multimedia elements, models and educational stations deepen and expand the wealth of information on offer.

Art from Africa

The Ethnological Museum presents its new permanent exhibition of "Art from Africa", starting from 27 August 2005. These masterpieces could previously be seen at the exhibition "Art from Africa" in Brazil in 2003/2004. That exhibition attracted more than a million visitors, and won two awards.
The concept, arrangement and presentation of the exhibition emphasises the significance of art as a central component of the different cultures of Africa. It is arranged in four large groups, starting with an introduction to aspects of the African history of art, followed by figures, performance and design.

The new permanent exhibition makes clear that art from Africa has its own art-historical development, which the Western world failed to understand or recognise for a long time. African art was instead regarded as primitive - a stigma based on the ideology of the colonial age.
Beyond that the exhibition points out that art from Africa, in addition to its religious significance, had a multiplicity of functions in African societies.

Presented by:

Ethnological Museum

The Empire of the Incas

Starting in the early 15th century, the Inca rulers soon managed to conquer a gigantic region within an incredibly short period of time. Their empire encompassed more than 100 different ethnic groups in what are today Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador and northern Argentina, each with different social and political organizational structures and different languages.

The newly designed section of the exhibition on South American archaeology examines the principles and mechanisms of imperial ideology: what was the nature of the ties between the rulers and the subdued populations? How did the Incas control and secure this immense empire up to the arrival of the Spaniards?

The new exhibition contains over 60 objects of Inca culture, among them knotted cords the Incas used for surveying, rare fabrics, typical clay vessels, stone works and artfully crafted gold and silver works. Each artefact tells of the role it played in stabilizing imperial dominance and maintaining control.

Presented by:

Ethnological Museum

Treasures of Faith

The most famous testaments to medieval church art from the National Museums’ Museum of Decorative Arts, Berlin, and the Dom-Museum, Hildesheim, have been brought together in a show hosted in the Bode Museum.

Of Dragons and Heroes

An exhibition for children aged 4 to 10.

Tales of dragons and heroes are fantastical and real at once, colourful and faded, brash and gentle, grand and pithy. They've already been told a thousand times before, can be read out loud, acted out and or become the stuff of painting. But they can also be newly invented and told for the first time. In our museum, we've got a host of dragon-slayers, proud knights and women saints, just waiting to be discovered.

Saint George, that most eminent of dragon-slayers, has many exciting adventures to retell. But besides him, there were a few women saints able to tame the odd dragon too. So just what is it that makes a hero?

Dragons and heroes are all on show in this exhibition in the Children's Gallery, where a fantastical world entices young visitors to join in by telling or hearing tales, by playing and touching, or by painting and making puzzles. And, last but not least, there's a dragon's skeleton on show that needs some beautifully painted dragon scales to cover it and to bring it to life for us to admire.

Presented by:

Besucher-Dienste der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin

Erkundungen in Europa

Nach zwei Jahren Umbauzeit öffnet das Museum Europäischer Kulturen ab dem 9. Dezember 2011 im Bruno-Paul-Bau in Dahlem wieder seine Tore. Die Sonderausstellung "Erkundungen in Europa. Visuelle Studien im 19. Jahrhundert" greift anhand von zwei Beispielen das Thema der kulturellen Begegnungen aus der ebenfalls neu eröffnenden Dauerausstellung auf.
Reisende Künstler und Wissenschaftler des 19. Jahrhunderts wollten andere Lebenswelten kennenlernen und erforschen. Ihre Impressionen hielten sie in Bildern und Fotografien fest. Sie ließen auch maßstabsgerechte Architekturmodelle anfertigen. Ölgemälde des Berliner Malers Wilhelm Kiesewetter, der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts 14 Jahre lang durch Nord- und Osteuropa reiste, zeigen dies eindrücklich. Die Fotografie steckte zu der Zeit zwar noch in ihren Anfängen, entwickelte sich aber rasch weiter, sodass die wissenschaftliche Fotografie bald detailgetreue Zeichnungen und Bilder ablöste. Hier haben sich besonders Wissenschaftler der Berliner Gesellschaft für Ethnologie, Anthropologie und Urgeschichte, wie Rudolf Virchow, hervorgetan.

Presented by:
Museum of European Cultures

Aquarelle von Erich Heckel

Aquarelle von Erich Heckel

Under Trees. The Germans and the Forest

Around 30 percent of the entire surface area of Germany is covered by woods. Today the forest presents itself to observers as a mixture of economic and recreational areas; it serves as a source of lumber and as hunting grounds, provides fitness trails and practice areas for horseback riders and mountain bikers, attracts mushroom gatherers and is simply a place for leisure and relaxation. The forest is a constantly changing cultural landscape, formed by man, a product of sustainable forestry and modern recreational activities. Yet for us the forest still seems to represent the ideal image of Nature, an organically grown, immutable counterworld to civilization, as it were. The woods and trees possess great symbolic power; they were and still are the subject of poetry, art and music and can embody both ideals and ideologies. For many people a decorated fir tree continues to be the indispensable centrepiece of the "German Christmas", and the gnarled oak is considered the prototype of the German mentality both at home and abroad. When the woods appear to be in danger, when a forest area is to be cleared, Germans go on the warpath.

This is of course only a partial sketch of possible relations between man and woods. But it is enough to shed light on the cultural-historical approach of the planned exhibition: our image of the woods is a forest construct marked by aesthetic, social, national and economical values. We run into it in the artfully crafted inlays on the butts of hunting rifles of the 17th century no less so than on postcards of the late 19th century, where the forest serves as a backdrop for the touristic experiencing of Nature.

This gradual transformation of the woods into an imaginative projection surface for artistic, moral-educational and political-ideological concepts is to be brought to light without neglecting the "real" forest as a natural area. In the exhibition the forest will therefore also be seen as an economic factor for the provision of timber and other products as well as in its significance as the object of romantic nostalgia in an increasingly bourgeois society, as the embodiment of national identity, and as the subject of the "Waldsterben" debate of the 1980s, which failed to convince many of Germany's European neighbours that the woods were actually dying.

Internationally renowned experts from the areas of history, art, culture, environment, forestry and ethnology will discuss these topics at length in a richly illustrated volume of essays.

EVA BESNYÖ

Eva Besnyö’s (1910-2003) photographic creed was oriented on the “New Vision” which Albert Renger-Patzsch had also propagated in his pioneering publication “It’s a Beautiful World” (Die Welt ist schön) in 1928. Having grown up in a bourgeois-Jewish family in Budapest, in 1928 she decided to complete her training in the modern photo studio run by Jozsef Pesci. She moved to Berlin in 1930, and the city of the avant-garde continued to influence her decisively throughout her life. It was here that Besnyö developed her photographic style and, like her Hungarian colleagues – including Moholy-Nagy, Kertesz, Nora Dumas, Ergy Landau and Capa –, she made a decisive contribution to new European photography.

In 1932 Besnyö left Berlin because she felt threatened by National Socialism. She succeeded in further developing her career in Amsterdam, where she survived German occupation and became a much sought-after photo journalist after the war. The modern aesthetics of the 1920s have always remained the yardstick of Eva Besnyö’s photography. This exhibition with 120 vintage prints will be the first retrospective of work by the Dutch Grande Dame of photography in Germany.

The exhibition and catalogue are being made possible with help from the Hauptstadtkulturfonds.

ART IN BERLIN 1880-1980

The Berlinische Galerie collects art produced in Berlin since 1870. From now on, the museum will be presenting internationally acclaimed works from the fields of painting, graphic art, sculpture, photography and architecture in new exhibition architecture designed by the Berlin architectural office of David Saik.

Surreal Worlds

The Collection Scharf-Gerstenberg is exhibiting excellent works by the Surrealists and their forerunners. Paintings, sculptures and works on paper are being exhibited on three floors under the title "Surreal Worlds". The spectrum of artists ranges from Piranesi, Goya, Klinger and Redon to Dalí, Magritte, Max Ernst and Dubuffet.

The history of fantastical art is traced in more than 250 works. Surrealism, a movement seeking to renew art whose principles were proclaimed in a manifesto by André Breton in the Paris of 1924, is at the centre of the collection.
Nearly all members of the group of Surrealists are represented by selected works in the collection. There are larger groups of works, in particular, by René Magritte, Max Ernst and Hans Bellmer, but also by Wols and Paul Klee. The central pictorial strategies of Surrealism, such as combinatorics, metamorphosis and pure psychic automatism are illustrated by numerous virtuoso examples.
Surrealism has its place in a significant line of tradition in occidental art. The earliest works in the collection include Piranesi's illustrations of fantastical dungeon architecture as well as the nightmarish ghostly figures in Goya's etchings. French Symbolism of the late 19th century is represented by paintings of Odilon Redon and Gustave Moreau, as is its German counterpart in the form of graphic cycles of Max Klinger.
The spectrum of art on exhibit is augmented by a film programme which includes both the classic surrealist films of Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí as well as films by contemporary artists who draw upon Surrealism or use its formal instruments in their work.

Presented by:

National Gallery

Museum for Pre- And Early History with objects from the Collection of Classical Antiquities

The Museum of Prehistory and Early History presents its expansive collection together with objects from the Collection of Classical Antiquities on three floors of the Neues Museum.

Visitors are greeted on the ground floor by the room entitled "Odin, Urns, Looted Art", which presents the 180 year old history of the museum, with preserved wall paintings depicting scenes from Nordic mythology. The following room is dedicated to Heinrich Schliemann, who bequeathed his collection of Trojan antiquities to the museum "for their eternal preservation". The room beyond that reveals how various influences in the art and culture of Cyprus conflated in a unique way on the island.

On the first floor, the museum's piano nobile, the visitor is led from the Roman bronze statue of the Xanten Boy, into "The Roman Provinces". From there, the visitor has access to the "Pantheon" - Chipperfield's new South Dome Room, in which two colossal statues of divinities from the 2nd century AD originating from the Egyptian city of Lycopolis await visitors. The next room, "Rome's Northern Neighbours" is dedicated to the tensions between Rome and the Germanic peoples, while "Migration Period and Middle Ages" provides an insight into the time from the Migration Period to the Carolingian Renaissance.

The second floor takes the visitor back to the earliest history of humankind: from the Stone Age, with the famous finds of the Neanderthal from Le Moustier and of modern man from Combe Capelle, through the Neolithic Period and into the Bronze Age. The Berlin Gold Hat exerts a particular fascination here, whose secret symbolism illustrates how exactly calendric knowledge was preserved even so long ago. The tour ends in the Ice Age, with its rich Scythian and Celtic finds. The study collection in historical cabinets from the 19th century complement the exhibition.

Presented by:

Museum of Prehistory and Early History
Collection of Classical Antiquities

The Berlin Sculpture Find

Directly opposite Berlin's town hall, the Rotes Rathaus, in the city's historical centre, eleven sculptures from the high modernist period were unearthed during archaeological finds conducted in 2010. This spectacular find throws new light on the fate of the artworks that were removed from the museums as part of the Nazi's 'Degenerate Art' campaign, subsequently ridiculed in Nazi-orchestrated exhibitions and which had remained missing to this day.

The works, once thought irretrievably lost, will be placed on show in the Neues Museum from 9 November 2010 on the Museum Island Berlin. They include:

• Otto Baum, Girl Standing, 1930
• Otto Freundlich, Head, 1925
• Karl Knappe, Hagar, 1923
• Marg Moll, Dancer, around 1930
• Emy Roeder, Pregnant Woman, 1918
• Edwin Scharff, Portrait of the Actress Anni Mewes, 1917/1921
• Gustav Heinrich Wolff, Robed Figure Standing, 1925
• Naum Slutzky, Female Bust, before 1931

The find also includes some still unidentified works that depict:
• a standing robed figure with a bunch of grapes
• a male torso
• a male head

The exhibition is accompanied by a publication (available in German) that gives details of the circumstances surrounding the find, the artists and works:

Private Property

The double exhibition - 'Us and Them' and 'Sex and Landscapes' - with which the Helmut Newton Foundation opened in June 2004, and which can still be visited at the first floor of the former Landwehrkasino until the beginning of 2005, is being supplemented by a presentation of Helmut Newton's personal items from 3 November 2004.

For this exhibition, entitled 'Private Property', further spacious exhibition rooms have been set up at ground level in the Museum for Photography. The show includes Newton's cameras, his own photo and art collection, the famous Newton-Mobile, his library and parts of his office at Monte Carlo. It also includes posters of his exhibitions and numerous publications of Helmut Newton's photographs.

The group project 'Us and Them' is a type of photographic diary by Helmut Newton and June Newton, dedicated to the portrait. The exhibition 'Sex and Landscape', on the other hand, shows a different Helmut Newton. Here, large-scale scenes and landscapes, in both black and white and colour, dating from the 1970s until today, are on show side by side. There are dark, clouded seascapes and breaking waves at Monte Carlo, Baroque statues in an Italian town, a seemingly endless desert highway nearby Las Vegas, and the Berliner Grunewald lake, all of them tinted with glamour and interwoven with sexual references to the female body.

Presented by:

Helmut Newton Foundation

Picasso and his Time

The Museum Berggruen presents exceptional works of classic modern art. Included among the artists are Picasso, Klee, Giacometti and Matisse. Oil paintings, sculptures and various works on paper are on show on three floors under the title "Picasso and his Time".

More than 100 works by Picasso form the heart of the collection. The many facets of his life's-work are represented: beginning with a drawing from his student days in 1897 and ending with works he painted in 1972, one year before he died. The blue and pink period are represented as well as cubism and classicism. Since the 1920s Picasso practised different variations in style at the same time.

The collection also focuses on Paul Klee who is represented with more than 60 pictures. These small, delicate compositions reflect the poetic world of the artist from 1917 to 1940. In addition there are more than 20 works by Henri Matisse, including more than half a dozen of his famous paper-cuts. Sculptures by Alberto Giacometti as well as examples of African art also enrich the heart of the collection.

Presented by:

National Gallery

Museum of Decorative Arts at the Kulturforum Potsdamer Platz

The Museum of Decorative Arts is one of the oldest of its kind in Germany. It possesses one of the most important collections of skilled craftsmanship. A tour of the spacious building at the Kulturforum Potsdamer Platz takes visitors through 7,000 square metres of exhibition room revealing the historical development and great variety of applied arts and crafts from the Middle Ages through to Art Nouveau and up to the present day.

This museum collects works of skilled craftsmanship ranging from post-antiquity to the present. It encompasses all the styles and periods in art history and includes silks and costumes, tapestries, decorative wainscots and furniture, vessels made of glass, enamel and porcelain, works in silver and gold as well as contemporary crafts and design objects. Most of the materials involved are of great value. Many items were commissioned by representatives of the church, the royal court and members of the aristocracy.

Presented by:

Museum of Decorative Arts

Italia Antiqua

The moment has arrived: this June sees the dramatic rearrangement of the archaeological collections on the Museum Island that began with the Neues Museum now enter its next chapter. Until extensive renovation work on the Altes Museum begins a few years from now, the Collection of Classical Antiquities will display on the upper floor its impressive collection of Etruscan and Roman art to an extent never before seen.

The world renowned Berlin Etruscan collection - one of the largest outside Italy - has not been on permanent display since 1939. Complete tomb finds and magnificent objects of Etruscan art are now on view in the south and east rooms of the Altes Museum. Late Hellenistic cremation urns and sarcophagi, with their original painted surfaces still in tact, form a bridge to the section on Roman tomb art, where visitors will encounter a few old favourites such as the Medea sarcophagus from the Pergamonmuseum. The transferral of Roman art from the Pergamonmuseum is just the first stage in a gradual process which will see the building cleared for renovations, with the Greek sculptures due to follow in the second half of the year.

The Roman art on display in the Altes Museum's north and west rooms will not merely include sculptures, but will also feature mummy portraits, exquisite silverware, cosmetic utensils made of glass and jewellery. For years, many of these objects had been lying dormant in storerooms due to a lack of exhibition space. They now form charming juxtapositions with other pieces in an exhibition which explores such themes as the villa, the Forum and art in the imperial court.

Museum of Islamic Art at Pergamon Museum

The Museum of Islamic Art is situated in the south wing of the Pergamonmuseum. Its permanent exhibition is dedicated to the art of Islamic peoples from the eighth to the nineteenth century. The works of art originate from the vast area stretching from Spain to India. The collection's main focus is on the Middle East including Egypt and Iran.
The broad spectrum of the collection includes architectural decorations, applied arts and crafts, jewelry, and rare illuminated and calligraphed manuscripts. The architectural decorations represent one of the major attractions, conveying also typical concepts of space and environments in various media: stone (the façade from Mshatta), stuccoes (archaeological finds from Samarra), painted wooden panelling (Aleppo Room) and wall ceramics in various techniques (prayer niches from Kashan and Konya).

The applied arts include works in all possible materials: ceramic vessels, metalwork, carvings in wood and bone, glasses, textiles, carpets. Within the area of books and ancient writings, the calligraphic works and miniatures from albums of Mogul times are of particular significance.

Presented by:
Museum of Islamic Art

Museum of the Ancient Near East in the Pergamon Museum

The Museum of the Ancient Near East ranks alongside the Louvre and the British Museum as one of the world's leading museums of ancient oriental treasures. Shown in an area covering 2,000 square metres the exhibits convey an impression of six thousand years of history, culture and art in the ancient Near East.
Fourteen rooms are devoted to this collection in the southern wing of the Pergamonmuseum. The collection contains many important examples of architecture, reliefs and smaller objects. Some are of great world significance and were once excavated by German archaeologists. They originate from the Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian and northern Syrian/eastern Anatolian regions which today include Iraq, Syria, and Turkey.

One of the major attractions lies along the main axis of this section of the museum. Here visitors can walk through and wonder at the world-famous reconstructions of brilliantly coloured Babylonian monuments: the Processional Way, the Ishtar Gate and the facade of the throne hall of King Nebuchadnezzar II (604 - 562 BC). Sections of the buildings were re-created to approximately the original dimensions by meticulously re-assembling the many broken pieces of excavated glazed bricks. Along the walls depictions of lions, bulls and dragons symbolize the major gods of Babylon.

The main attractions in the Babylonian Hall include the model of the Tower of Babel which was dedicated to Marduk, the chief god of the city, and a copy of the famous stela bearing the laws of King Hammurabi.

Presented by:
Museum of the Ancient Near East