The National Gallery () in Berlin, Germany, is a museum for art of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. It is part of the Berlin State Museums. From the Alte Nationalgalerie, which was built for it and opened in 1876, its exhibition space has expanded to include five other locations. The museums are part of the Berlin State Museums, owned by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation.

Locations The holdings of the National Gallery are currently shown in five locations: Alte Nationalgalerie: 19th-century art, on Museum Island Neue Nationalgalerie: 20th-century art, at the Kulturforum. The building, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, opened on 15 September 1968. Berggruen Museum: in Charlottenburg, showing classics of 20th-century modern art collected by Heinz Berggruen; added to the National Gallery in 1996. Scharf-Gerstenberg Collection: in Charlottenburg, showing 20th-century art from French Romanticism to Surrealism; added to the National Gallery in 2008. Hamburger Bahnhof: Museum für Gegenwart, contemporary art; added to the National Gallery in 1996. Friedrichswerder Church: 19th-century sculpture, a church designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, opened as an annexe of the National Gallery in September 1987. From 2012 to 2020 the building was closed owing to structural damage.SMB page

History

Planning, foundation and construction of the original building There was long discussion of the desirability of establishing a national gallery in Berlin,Over 40 years until it finally opened: Art in Berlin, 1815–1989, Exhibition catalogue, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia, Seattle: University of Washington, 1989, , p. 59. particularly during the period of revolutionary nationalism around 1848, and it became an increasingly serious proposition from 1850, when publications appeared advocating it. From the start it was bound up with the ambitions of Prussia and the wish for Berlin to become a capital of world renown.. The decision was finally taken in 1861, after the death of the banker and art patron Joachim Heinrich Wilhelm Wagener, who bequeathed his extensive collection (262 artworks) to the then Prince Regent, the future King William I, in the hope of catalysing the formation of a gallery of "more recent" art.Peter Gay, The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud Volume 5 Pleasure Wars, New York/London: Norton, 1998, , p. 184.Vieregger, p. 25.Emil Kueschke, "Die Nationalgalerie in Berlin", Unsere Zeit NF XIII.2 (1877) 241–66, p. 242 : "zu einer nationalen Galerie heranzuwachsen, welche die neuere Malerei auch in ihrer weitern Entwickelung darstellt". The collection was initially known as the Wagenersche und Nationalgalerie (Wagener and National Gallery) and was housed in the buildings of the Prussian Academy of Arts.Kueschke, p. 243.

Friedrich August Stüler began working on a design for a gallery building in 1863, based on a sketch by William I's brother, King Frederick William IV of Prussia.Keisch, p. 7. Two years and two failed plans later, his third proposal was finally accepted. Stüler died before planning was completed and Carl Busse handled the remaining details in 1865. In 1866, by order of the King and his cabinet, the Kommission für den Bau der Nationalgalerie (Commission for the construction of the national gallery) was created.Bernhard Maaz, ed. Die Alte Nationalgalerie: Geschichte, Bau und Umbau, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin: G + H, 2001, , p. 226 Ground was broken in 1867 under the supervision of Heinrich Strack. In 1872 the structure was completed and interior work began. The opening took place on March 22, 1876 in the presence of William I, who was by then German Emperor.Kueschke, p. 241.

The building, today the Alte Nationalgalerie, resembles a Greco-Roman temple (a form chosen for its symbolism that, it has been pointed out, is not well suited to displaying art)James J. Sheehan, "Aesthetic Theory and Architectural Practice: Schinkel's Museum in Berlin", in David Wetzel, ed., From the Berlin Museum to the Berlin Wall: Essays on the Cultural and Political History of Modern Germany, Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1996, , pp. 11–30, p. 26. and is stylistically a combination of late Classicism and early Neo-Renaissance. It was intended to express "the unity of art, nation, and history", and therefore has aspects reminiscent of a church (with an apse) and a theatre (a grand staircase leading to the entry) as well as a temple. An equestrian statue of Frederick William IV tops the stairs, and the inside stairs have a frieze by Otto Geyer depicting German history from prehistoric times to the 19th century. The inscription over the door reads "To German art, 1871" (the year of the founding of the Empire, not the year the gallery was completed).Keisch, p. 9.Frank B. Tipton, A History of Modern Germany Since 1815, Berkeley: University of California, 2003, , pp. 132–33. On his first visit to Berlin, in November 1916, the young Adolf Hitler sent a postcard of this building to a comrade in arms to congratulate him on receiving the Iron Cross.Thomas Friedrich, tr. Stewart Spencer, Hitler's Berlin: Abused City, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, 2012, , p. 6.

Until 1933 The first director of the National Gallery was Max Jordan, who was appointed in 1874, before the building was completed. When the building opened, in addition to Wagener's collection, it contained over 70 cartoons for friezes on mythological and religious subjects by Peter von Cornelius; high-ceilinged galleries were designed to accommodate them. Wagener's collection was not limited to German art; in particular, it included Belgian artists who were popular at the time; and under Jordan the gallery's holdings rapidly came to include an unusually large collection of sculpture and a drawings department. However, Jordan was hampered throughout his tenure by the Regional Art Commission, which was made up of representatives of the academic art establishment and resisted all attempts to acquire modernist art.Eberhard Roters, "The Birth Pangs of Modernism", in Berlin/New York: Like and Unlike: Essays on Architecture and Art from 1870 to the Present, ed. Josef Paul Kleihues and Christina Rathgeber, New York: Rizzoli, 1993, , pp. 180–93, p. 187.

In 1896, he was succeeded as director by Hugo von Tschudi, formerly assistant head of the Berlin museums under Wilhelm von Bode. Although he had previously had no association with modern art, he was fired with enthusiasm for Impressionism on a visit to Paris where he was introduced to the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, and became determined to acquire a representative collection of Impressionist art for the National Gallery. When the commission vetoed his requests, he secured the patronage of a large number of wealthy bourgeois art collectors, most of them Jewish.Roters, p. 188. He also rearranged the exhibition spaces, putting many items in storage to make room for works by Manet, Monet, Degas and Rodin as well as the earlier Constable and Courbet. One of the first, soon after Tschudi took up the post, was Manet's In the Conservatory; in 1897, the Berlin National Gallery became the first museum in the world to acquire a painting by Cézanne.Emily D. Bilski, Berlin Metropolis: Jews and the New Culture, 1890–1918, Exhibition catalogue, Berkeley: University of California / New York: Jewish Museum, 1999, , p. 3. This moved the gallery decisively away from emphasis on Prussia and the rest of the German Empire. In response to complaints from the academic connoisseurs, William II decreed in 1899 that all acquisitions for the National Gallery must have his personal authorisation; Tschudi initially complied and rehung the old works, but the imperial decree proved unenforceable, prompting the Kaiser to build public monuments to his power instead. In 1901, at the inauguration of the memorials on the Siegesallee, he gave a speech denouncing "gutter art" which became known as the Rinnsteinrede (gutter speech).John C. G. Röhl, Wilhelm II Volume 2 Der Aufbau der persönlichen Monarchie, 1888–1900, Munich: Beck, 2001, , pp. 1022, 1025 : "Das kann sie nur, wenn die Kunst die Hand dazu bietet, wenn sie erhebt, statt daß sie in den Rinnstein niedersteigt!"John C. G. Röhl, tr. Sheila de Bellaigue, Wilhelm II: The Kaiser's Personal Monarchy, 1888–1900, New York: Cambridge University, 2004, , p. 922: "That situation can only be brought about if Art lends her hand to the task, if she elevates instead of sinking into the gutter."

Tschudi also had a great appreciation for the German Romantics, many of whose paintings were included in Wagener's original bequest."Magere Schultern", Der Spiegel, 9 September 1968 Keisch, p. 31. An exhibition of 100 years of German art at the National Gallery in 1906 contributed to reawakening interest in artists such as Caspar David Friedrich. This was also an interest shared by Tschudi's successor, Ludwig Justi, who was director from 1909 to 1933 and added to the gallery's holdings in early 19th-century German painting.

In 1919, after the abolition of the Prussian monarchy, the gallery acquired the Crown Prince's Palace (Kronprinzenpalais) and used it to display the modern art. This became known as the Neue Abteilung (New Department) or National Gallery II, and met the demand by contemporary artists for a Gallery of Living Artists.Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Art treasures of the Berlin State Museums, New York: Abrams, 1965, , p. 65.Françoise Forster-Hahn, Spirit of an Age: Nineteenth-Century Paintings from the Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Exhibition catalogue, National Gallery, London, National Gallery of Art, Washington, London: National Gallery, 2001, , p. 55.Brian Ladd, The Companion Guide to Berlin, Woodbridge, Suffolk/Rochester, New York: Companion Guides/Boydell & Brewer, 2004, , p. 32. It opened with works by the Berlin Secessionists, the Impressionists and the Expressionists.Joan Weinstein, The End of Expressionism: Art and the November Revolution in Germany, 1918–19, Chicago: University of Chicago, 1990, , p. 85. This was the first state promotion of Expressionist works, which were unpopular with large numbers of the public,Elizabeth M. Grady, "The Popular Opposition: Politicizing Modern Art in the National Gallery in Berlin, 1918–1933", in Julie F. Codell, ed., The Political Economy of Art: Making the Nation of Culture, Cranbury, New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University/Associated University Presses, 2008, , p. 96. but the collection was, in the judgement of Justi's assistant Alfred Hentzen, superior to that of all other German galleries then collecting modern art.Stephanie Barron, Degenerate Art: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany, Exhibition catalogue, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, New York: Abrams, 1991, , p. 116. By far the largest share of artworks in the 1937 exhibition of 'Degenerate Art' under the Nazis were taken from this collection.Tessa Friederike Rosebrock, Kurt Martin und das Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg: Museums- und Ausstellungspolitik im 'Dritten Reich' und in der unmittelbaren Nachkriegszeit, Ars et scientia 2, Berlin: Akademie, 2012, , p. 74

Nazi Germany