An Icon of Modern Architecture –
Mies van der Rohe's Neue Nationalgalerie

Architecture
Among the numerous offers of congratulations extended to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe on the occasion of his 75th birthday was a letter from Berlin, the city from which the architect had emigrated to Chicago in 1938. Berlin's senator for building and housing sought not only to congratulate Mies, but also to express his hope that the master might be persuaded to design a building for Berlin. Mies was presented with a number of alternatives, one of which proposed a building to accommodate the „Gallery of the Twentieth Century and art exhibitions“. He selected this proposal and was commissioned accordingly.

In many respects, the commission was for Mies the fulfilment of what had been an almost lifelong development as an architect. Where he had built villas in Berlin for art collectors back in the 1920s, he was yet to create a museum as such. Mies devoted his full attention to the final project to be completed during his lifetime, producing an outcome which might be regarded as the sum total of his knowledge and experience.

The concept of large, open spaces, free on all sides so as to enact a practical dissolution of the boundaries between building and environment, was a leitmotiv in Mies's designs from the twenties onwards. The Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery) brought to fruition the concept of a space raised slightly above ground level, glassed in from all sides, constructed on a monumental scale with the purest of forms. Taking up ideas from two earlier abandoned projects - a museum to house the Schäfer Collection in Schweinfurt and the Bacardi headquarters in Cuba - he sharpened his conception of space to a higher, more absolute form.

The Altes Museum (Old Musem), designed by Schinkel, may have served as a yardstick for Mies in designing a modern museum. Yet he unfailingly sought to have his architectural work constitute a „spatial articulation of the will of time“, and the Neue Nationalgalerie proved no exception: it was to act as a response to the time of its construction and yet to simultaneously transcend it. Mies's attention was undoubtedly focused on the upper gallery, on the perfect design of the glass pavilion. The uniqueness of the construction - in those days it was the largest suspended steel construction in Europe - is displayed in a self-conscious, albeit understated, manner. No comparable space built on the same scale with such perfect proportions and a virtual elimination of functional detail has ever been constructed since. With the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin's architectural history came into its own once more.

On 15 September 1968, the Neue Nationalgalerie was opened.
The inaugural exhibition in the upper gallery was dedicated to the work of Piet Mondrian, and in the lower gallery the permanent collection was exhibited, showing works from Romanticism to what was, at that time, the present.

History and Collection
The Nationalgalerie (National Gallery), designed by August Stüler, was opened on Berlin's Museum Island in 1876. Its collection rapidly expanded through acquisitions and donations. Originally comprising works by Blechen, Schinkel and Menzel, the collection was extended, much to the Emperor's indignation, to include works by Manet, Monet, Renoir and Cézanne. In 1919, the then director of the Nationalgalerie, Ludwig Justi, opened a gallery to accommodate work by contemporary artists in the Kronprinzenpalais. The upstairs rooms were reserved as a rule for the works of individual artists or artist collectives.
Justi consistently endeavored to introduce the oeuvre of particular artists by exhibiting a range of works drawn from the various creative periods of their artistic careers. Heckel, Nolde and Beckmann were thus each afforded a separate room, and another room was dedicated to the work of Schmidt-Rottluff and Kirchner. These were complemented by works by Kandinsky, Campendonk and Klee, to mention but a few. With its „Experimental Gallery“, the Nationalgalerie possessed what was, in those days, the best and most comprehensive collection of modern German art, serving as both influence and example to other museums.

Following the National Socialists' rise to power, Justi's subsequent dismissal from office and the seizure of 500 artworks on grounds of purported „degeneracy“, the Nationalgalerie's development was abruptly halted. In 1939, all remaining works were evacuated from the museum in order to protect them from the Allied bombing. Since the end of the war there have been assiduous efforts to compensate for the gaps in the collection caused by the Nazi régime and the effects of war. An important contribution to these efforts was made by the Gallery of the Twentieth Century which was established by the Council of Greater Berlin in 1945.

Following the foundation of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation) in 1957, the part of the collection that had remained in the West was exhibited again for the first time in 1959 at the Grand Orangerie of Schloß Charlottenburg. In order to exhibit the ever-expanding collection, it became necessary to construct a new building in the western part of the city.

The Neue Nationalgalerie, constructed according to plans designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, was the first museum to be opened at the Kulturforum in 1968. It united the remaining holdings of the Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery) collection held in the West with the collection of the Gallery of the Twentieth Century. Upon the reunification of Germany in 1989, the reunited collection of the Nationalgalerie once again necessitated an overall reorganization.

Nineteenth-century art, including a series of Impressionist works, was moved to the Alte Nationalgalerie on the Museum Island and to the Galerie der Romantik. Nineteenth-century sculpture was transferred in part to the Friedrichwerdersche Church in Berlin-Mitte. And in 1996, art dating from the 1960s through to the present day found its new domicile at the recently opened Hamburger Bahnhof.

The Neue Nationalgalerie - the „light temple of glass“ - houses European painting and sculpture from classical Modernism to the 1960s, including works by artists such as Picasso, Munch, Feininger, Dix and Kokoschka. The collection of German Expressionists, comprising works by Kirchner, Heckel, and Nolde among others, is regarded as one of the most significant of its kind in Germany. Another central piece of the collection is a group of eleven paintings by Max Beckmann, produced between 1906 and 1942, which present an overview of his artistic trajectory. Surrealist painting is represented by artists such as Ernst, Dalí and Miró. Otto Dix and George Grosz document the Verism and New Objectivity movements with their paintings. The collection culminates with American painting of the sixties and seventies, with the abstract colour field painting of Barnett Newman, Frank Stella and Ellsworth Kelly.

From the 18th of September 2009 until the 17th of January 2010 the Neue Nationalgalerie houses the Thomas Demand exhibition Nationalgalerie.

The gallery space downstairs has the exhibition Dreams in Pictures. The Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch collection on display until the 22nd of November 2009

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