Detail page - Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz

The Museum Berggruen is going on tour with an exhibition: The majority of the works will be travelling to Japan, China and France from September. Further stops are planned. During this time, from 5 September 2022, the Museum Berggruen will close for three years. During this time, the museum will undergo a complete refurbishment. The remaining works in Berlin will be presented at other locations of the Nationalgalerie to ensure that the collection remains accessible to Berliners until the reopening planned for 2025. The neighbouring Museum Scharf-Gerstenberg with its Surrealist art will also remain open at the Charlottenburg location.

Klaus Biesenbach, Director of the Neue Nationalgalerie: "Museum Berggruen's exhibition tour is a great opportunity to share the Berlin works with new art enthusiasts in a broader context and thus provides excellent support for the Nationalgalerie's mission to be visible as an important collection of international significance."

The listed Stülerbau West, the head building of the Berggruen Museum, will be completely renovated from autumn 2022. The outer shell in particular is in urgent need of refurbishment. In addition to technical renovations, the project will also improve visitor guidance and make the building barrier-free.

Hermann Parzinger, President of the SPK: "The Museum Berggruen is home to a world-class collection. Such a jewel requires modern technical equipment and design in order to be able to present its works appropriately in the future. After SPK took over the property from the state of Berlin, we therefore commissioned the Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning to record the damage and develop a refurbishment concept and will now also make it more sustainable as part of the project."

In addition to the comprehensive façade and roof renovation, waterproofing measures will also be carried out on the basement walls. The technical systems for museum operations will be completely renewed. The building will be stripped back to its shell. Accessibility is also a particular focus of the refurbishment, with the lift in the entrance area and the lift cabin being replaced and a barrier-free guidance system installed. The entrance area will be made more attractive, the lighting situation will be fundamentally improved and the circular tour on the first floor will be completed.

The office merz merz was commissioned to carry out the refurbishment in line with the preservation order. The total cost of the refurbishment is currently expected to be around 22 million euros.

History of the Stüler buildings

Between 1851 and 1859, the architect Friedrich August Stüler erected two buildings on the Schlossstraße / Spandauer Damm site opposite Charlottenburg Palace. The two similar head buildings with square floor plans and monopods visible from afar originally served as officers' barracks for the Gardes-du-Corps regiment.
Both Stüler buildings were badly damaged during the Second World War. They were restored in the 1950s. Since then, the buildings have not been extensively renovated.

The Stüler Building West has been home to the Berggruen Museum since 1996. To expand the Museum Berggruen, the neighbouring building at Spandauer Damm 17 and a modern, single-storey connecting building were added to the western Stülerbau between 2010 and 2013, based on a design by Berlin architects Kuehn Malvezzi.

The property was managed by the state of Berlin until 2012, when it was taken over by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK) with equal ownership rights. In day-to-day operations, more and more deficiencies in the building technology and the building fabric became apparent, and the requirements for contemporary museum and exhibition operations have changed fundamentally.

Tour of the works

Under the title "The Museum Berggruen/Nationalgalerie Berlin Collection", 97 works will be shown in Tokyo, Osaka, Shanghai and Beijing, including the major works "The Yellow Sweater" (1939) and "Large Reclining Nude" (1942) by Pablo Picasso, "Madame Cézanne" (1885) by Paul Cézanne and "The Rope Skipper" by Henri Matisse (1952). In Tokyo and Osaka, the presentation will be expanded to include eleven works from Japanese collections. From autumn 2024, the Museum Berggruen will be a guest at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris.

The exhibition tour offers the works from the Museum Berggruen an international stage at locations outside Berlin and thus opens up different resonance spaces: in Japan, interest in European modernism dates back to the first half of the 20th century; in China, comparatively few original works from these art movements have been on display to date; finally, Paris is the conceptual origin of a large proportion of these works.
The exhibition tour "The Museum Berggruen/Nationalgalerie Berlin Collection" is curated by Gabriel Montua, Director of the Museum Berggruen; in Japan together with Hiroya Murakami, former Deputy Director of the National Museum of Western Art Tokyo and Joachim Jäger, Deputy Director of the Neue Nationalgalerie.

Stations:
8 October 2022 - 22 January 2023: The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo
4 February - 21 May 2023: The National Museum of Art, Osaka
8 July - 8 October 2023: UCCA Edge Shanghai (tbc)
25 November 2023 - 25 February 2024: UCCA Beijing (tbc)
from autumn 2024: Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris