Grundstein Antike. Berlins erstes Museum
In the organizer's words:
Today, a visit to the Museum Island is a must for many visitors to Berlin. Since its opening in 1830, what was initially the Royal Museum quickly developed into a crowd-puller. However, the experience of visiting a museum back then was completely different to today. The special exhibition on the upper floor of the Altes Museum provides exciting insights into the beginnings of the museum and shows a selection of antiquities that were already on display in the first permanent exhibition in 1830.
The foundation stone for the museum designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel in Berlin's Lustgarten was laid on July 9, 1825. Just five years later, on August 3, 1830, Berlin's and Prussia's first public museum was opened to the general public. The Altes Museum quickly developed into a crowd-puller and an important institution for basic archaeological research to this day.
The special exhibition highlights not only Schinkel's structural challenges and innovative solutions, but also the social conditions and the very different appearance of the exhibition rooms at the time, which were completely destroyed during the Second World War. A large-scale model in the center of the exhibition conveys an impression of Schinkel's original building, of which only a few pictorial representations from the museum's founding period and historical photographs from the later 19th century give an idea.
Schinkel's stroke of genius
The Altes Museum actually marks a turning point in the architectural history of public buildings for art: for the first time ever, a building was designed specifically as a pure art museum. Karl Friedrich Schinkel created a type of building that would shape the design of museums for decades to come. The architect Schinkel faced major technical and financial challenges when building the museum - the Prussian King Frederick William III demanded extreme economy, so innovative and at the same time cost-effective solutions had to be developed.
Ancient art - and Old Masters!
While the ground floor housed small antique works of art - in particular vases, bronzes, terracottas, gems, cameos and coins - the main floor with the rotunda was dedicated to antique (mainly Roman) sculptures and the upper floor to the royal picture gallery. For reasons of content and conservation, the latter can only play a minor role in our exhibition, but will feature prominently in a major anniversary exhibition planned for 2030 in the James-Simon-Galerie.
Enjoyment of art and the bourgeoisie's thirst for knowledge
The museum opened at a time when the middle classes were on the rise and new educational ideals were being propagated. The public demanded freely accessible opportunities to view art, and Frederick William III promoted this idea for the education of his subjects. The museum quickly became a popular destination for educated middle-class society far beyond Prussia. But how open to the public was it really? Which groups of visitors flocked to the museum and which works of art particularly fascinated them?
A look into the future
The special exhibition shows a cross-section of the works of art that were already on display in the first presentation of the Altes Museum. Sculptures, vases, bronzes and terracottas tell the story of a collection that continues to inspire today. At the same time, the exhibition is not conceived purely as a retrospective, but also takes a look into the future and thus into the time after the urgently needed general renovation of the building. We are therefore asking the public: how must the museum continue to develop in order to inspire future generations with the art of antiquity?
This content has been machine translated.
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