Neue Nationalgalerie

The museum building and its sculpture gardens were designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and opened on 15 September 1968 in what was then West Berlin south of the Tiergarten park. The gallery closed in 2015 for renovation. The work, by David Chipperfield Architects, was completed in 2021, and the museum reopened in August 2021 with an exhibition of works by American sculptor Alexander Calder.

It is associated with Germany. The record gives 1968 as its date of establishment or first appearance. It forms part of Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Its recorded seat is Neue Nationalgalerie. It is recorded in the collection of Neue Nationalgalerie.

• Name — Neue Nationalgalerie • Established — 1968 • Location — Kulturforum, Berlin, Germany • Architect — Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

• Illustration — This interior view of the Neue Nationalgalerie's ground floor shows the play of light off the reflective floor, as well as the animated red LCD tracks on the ceiling. The plan of the Neue Nationalgalerie is divided into two distinct stories. The upper story serves as an entrance hall as well as the primary special exhibit gallery, totaling 2683 m2 of space. It is elevated from street level and only accessible by three flights of steps. Though it only comprises a small portion of the total gallery space, the exhibition pavilion stands boldly as the building's primary architectural expression. Eight cruciform columns, two on each length placed so as to avoid corners, support a square pre-stressed steel roof plate 1.8 meters thick and painted black. An 18 meter cantilever allows for ample space between the gallery's glazed façade and eight supporting columns. Mies' office studied this cantilever extensively in various scaled models in order to ensure its structural stability as well as the seeming flatness of the roof plate. The floor-to-ceiling height reaches 8.4 meters, and the space is (laid) out on a 3.6 meter square dimensional grid. Black anodized aluminum "egg crates" fit within the grid house lighting fixtures, with air ducts suspended above. The lower story serves primarily as housing for the gallery's permanent collection, though it also includes a library, offices, and a shop and café, and totals about 10000 m2 of space. It is three-quarters below ground so as to allow for safe storage of the artwork. Its sole glazed façade looks out on the museum's sloping sculpture garden and provides ample indirect interior lighting. A rooftop plaza further extends the museum's exhibition space.

In 1956, José M. Bosch, president of Ron Bacardí y Compañía, approached Mies to commission the design of a new office space in Havana. He was particularly interested in a very open plan, and the relatively simple idea Mies came up with involved a square roof plate supported on each side by two columns, entirely free of interior columns. Though initial structural challenges had to be dealt with, the resulting pavilion typology became integral to Mies' architectural lexicon, in many ways the epitome of his universal conception of space. Planning for the Bacardí building was abandoned in September 1960 due to the political unrest in Cuba, but about the same time two other commissions were brought to Mies' office. In the summer of 1960 the wealthy industrialist Georg Schaefer approached Mies about constructing a museum in Schweinfurt for his private collection of nineteenth-century art. A modest initial plan was drawn for the structure, but later that year Mies decided to reconfigure the abandoned Bacardí project for the Schweinfurt museum because he was eager to see it constructed. A scaled-down model of the Bacardí project was created, rendered now in steel rather than concrete. Then in March 1961, Mies was contacted by Berlin's Senator for Construction and Housing who invited him to design an exhibition space for the national collection of early twentieth-century art. The two museum projects, though different in scale, were essentially identical in form, each a steel version of the original Barcardí design. Though the Schweinfurt project never came to fruition, the reductive exercise of continual reconfiguration led to a refinement of Mies' Berlin design, and the Neue Nationalgalerie remains as the sole built form of the three related plans.

Having had no thorough modernization since its inauguration, the Neue Nationalgalerie required upgrades to its air-conditioning, lighting, security, accessibility, electricity, visitor facilities and the behind-the-scenes infrastructure for moving art. In 2012 it was announced that British architect David Chipperfield would oversee a major renovation of the building. In a non-competitive selection process common for public contracts in Germany, his firm was chosen for the contract out of 24 architectural firms based on a two-stage negotiation process. Originally planned for €101 million, the €140 million renovation project started in 2015 and was originally expected to last three years, during which time the museum was closed. Original building elements, such as handrails and shelves, were removed, restored and reinstalled in their previous locations. Archival material dating from the construction at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, helped the architects remain true to Mies's design. Meanwhile, the structural framework of the roof, which rests on eight steel beams, and the glass facade was restored.

The Neue Nationalgalerie's ceiling, constructed as a grid of black-painted steel beams, has been used as an exhibit surface in itself for Installation for the Neue Nationalgalerie, an installation of long lines of LCD displays by artist Jenny Holzer in 2001, which continuously scrolled abstract patterns down their length. The Neue Nationalgalerie's terrace provides a particularly prominent space for large-scale pieces of sculpture from the 20th century. Permanently installed sculptures include Gudari (1957) by Eduardo Chillida, Polis (1968) by Joannis Avramidis, the kinetic metal sculpture Vier Vierecke im Geviert (1969) by George Rickey, Three Way Piece No.2: The Archer (1964–65) by Henry Moore, Têtes et Queue (1965) by Alexander Calder, and Berlin Block Charlie Chaplin (1978) by Richard Serra. In 2003, with the permission of the Barnett Newman Foundation, a fourth edition of the sculpture Broken Obelisk (1963) by Barnett Newman was cast and temporarily installed in front of the museum. In 2011, Thomas Schütte's work Vater Staat (2010) was donated by Nicolas Berggruen and installed on the terrace. Many other pieces of sculpture – by artists from Auguste Renoir to Ulrich Rückriem – are on permanent display in the museum's garden.

• 1967–1974: Werner Haftmann • 1974–1975: Wieland Schmied • 1975–1997: Dieter Honisch • 1999–2008: Peter-Klaus Schuster • 2008–2020: Udo Kittelmann • 2020:-2022 Joachim Jäger • Since 1 January 2022: Klaus Biesenbach

• Illustration — A view from above • Illustration — Entrance side with Three Way Piece No. 2: The Archer • Illustration — Interior view • Illustration — Museum western façade after restoration

The collection features a number of unique highlights of modern 20th-century art. Particularly well represented are Cubism, Expressionism, the Bauhaus and Surrealism. The collection owns masterpieces of artists like Pablo Picasso, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Joan Miró, Wassily Kandinsky and Barnett Newman. The design of the building, despite its large size, allows for the display of only a small part of the collection, and the displays are therefore changed at intervals. • Illustration — Pablo Picasso, 1909, Femme assise (Sitzende Frau) • Illustration — Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1914, Potsdamer Platz • Illustration — Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1913, Badende am Strand • Illustration — August Macke, 1910, Portrait of Franz Marc • Illustration — Edvard Munch, 1907, Lübecker Hafen mit Holstentor • Illustration — Alexej von Jawlensky, 1912, Frauenkopf • Illustration — Walter Gramatté, 1920, Porträt Rosa Schapiere • Illustration — Piet Mondriaan, 1922, Composition with blue, black, yellow and red • Illustration — Robert Delaunay, 1928, Eifelturm • Illustration — Marianne von Werefkin, 1924, Prozession bei Ascona • Illustration — Alexander Kanoldt, 1926, Still Life I • Illustration — Georg Schrimpf, 1932, Railway Crossing • Illustration — Heinrich Vogeler, 1936, Deutscher Stachanowarbeiter