Following the appointment of Klaus Biesenbach as the future director of the Neue Nationalgalerie, there are even more surprising news from the Association of National Museums in Berlin these days. This time it’s about the National Gallery, which in turn consists of various buildings – including the Berggruen Museum. This museum is owed to a foundation of the art collector Heinz Berggruen, who had to flee Berlin from the Nazis, but then brought a considerable collection around Picasso back to his hometown. It has been shown institutionally since 1996 under the roof of the Nationalgalerie and spatially under that of the western Stüler building opposite the Charlottenburg Palace. The latter is still the case, but compared to the former, the museum is now looking for significantly more independence. The Berggruen family is now financing the house itself with one million euros a year, has appointed the curator Gabriel Montua, who has previously worked there, as director and intends to carry out a comprehensive renovation of the premises in the coming years. After its completion in 2025, the house should develop more appeal than before. Because if it was generally referred to as a “jewel”, not least by the incumbent Minister of Culture Grütters, then it always sounded a bit as if this jewel was a rather hidden one. Ambitious special shows like the one about Picasso’s “Femmes d’Algier” and astonishing confrontations between Picasso and contemporary painters like Thomas Scheibitz have definitely been highlights of the Berlin exhibition calendar recently. The fact that the museums at the Charlottenburg Palace are a bit overshadowed by the Museum Island and the Kulturforum is of course a long-term consequence of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The donations and control of the family of the patron should now ensure that it does not have to stay that way. But the National Gallery could also play a certain role in this. Firstly, it is still associated, secondly, it maintains the Scharf-Gerstenberg Surrealist Collection right next door, and thirdly, with the upcoming realignments at the Kulturforum, the houses up in Charlottenburg are likely to serve as a marshalling yard for many of the classic modern works that are particularly popular with the public play a role.