The German Foreign Office is planning to use a former ambassador’s residence at 1014 Fifth Avenue, across the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to establish a German Academy of Art in New York. The building, which belongs to the German government, will host cultural and diplomatic events, exhibitions, symposia and artists’ residencies.
Originally built between 1906 and 1907 for the family of James Gerard, who became the US Ambassador in Berlin, the six-storey townhouse was bought by the Federal Republic of Germany in 1960. For decades, it was used by the Goethe-Institut, the German culture and language organisation that has 150 international outposts. In 2010, the institute moved downtown.
Since then, the building has mostly remained vacant. The German Foreign Office now plans to modernise the townhouse and is aiming to raise money for the project, mainly from private sponsors, with some state support.
Lutheran exhibitions “In these stormy times, our transatlantic partnership with the US remains crucial,” says Andreas Görgen, the director-general for culture and communication at the German ministry of foreign affairs. As well as the new German Academy in New York, the German government hopes to acquire Thomas Mann’s house in California. That property, in Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles, is the place where the German author wrote Doctor Faustus. It was put on the market for $15m this year, prompting appeals in Germany for the government to buy it and transform it into a writers’ retreat.
The German government has also backed a series of exhibitions in the US tied to the 500th anniversary of the publication of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses in 1517. A trio of exhibitions dedicated to Luther is now on view at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Pitts Theology Library at Emory University, Atlanta. Meanwhile, Renaissance and Reformation: German Art in the Age of Dürer and Cranach, which includes more than 100 works on loan from German state museums, is due to open at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on 20 November (until 26 March 2017).
