The Art Newspaper

Doubts over Berlin Gemäldegalerie’s move to Museum Island

Venue may remain at unloved Kulturforum site

By Rita Pokorny | Web only
Published online 30 Sep 09 (Museums)

Berlin state secretary of culture Andre Schmitz, in favour of Gemaldegalerie's move back to the Museum Island

berlin. Doubts raised by Michael Eissenhauer, director general of the Berlin State Museums, over the Gemäldegalerie’s move to Museum Island have caused a stir. Germany’s minister for culture Bernd Neumann and Berlin’s state secretary of culture André Schmitz reacted with surprise to remarks Eissenhauer made in an interview in Berlin newspaper B.Z., prompting Eissenhauer to clarify that he had merely meant the project was not feasible “in the foreseeable future”.

Schmitz is very much in favour of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation keeping to its original plans to bring the Gemäldegalerie back to the Museum Island. This view is strengthened by long-standing misgivings about the Kulturforum, the cultural site close to Potsdamer Platz that is currently home to the Gemäldegalerie.

Since 1998, when the Sammlung Alter Meister (Old Masters collection), now the Gemäldegalerie, moved from Dahlem to a new building on the site between the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Philharmonie, the building has been hidden behind the kind of sloping surface more suitable for skateboarders. Matthäikirchplatz, the square between Potsdamer Strasse and the gallery, is almost a wasteland, undeveloped and poorly lit. The majority of tourists spurn this area in preference for Museum Island.

Talking to The Art Newspaper, Monika Grütters, cultural spokesperson for the government and a member of the Bundestag, describes the Kulturforum as the “least successful site in West Berlin. The Gemäldegalerie, for example, is 100 metres too far back from the street. Even the title, Gemäldegalerie, should be more precise: it needs the addition of ‘Alter Meister’ to distinguish it from the neighbouring Neue Nationalgalerie. And the vague concept of the Kulturforum is difficult for visitors—especially international visitors—to understand.”

Four years ago the Berlin Senate approved a master plan by the city’s former building director Hans Stimmann to redevelop the Kulturforum area. If this plan, since thwarted by the economic crisis, were to be implemented, the slope in front of the Gemäldegalerie would disappear, private art galleries would be created next to the Matthäuskirche, and a small square bordered by new buildings could become a meeting place for museum and concert visitors.

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