Kulturforum

In the location's words:

With its museums, libraries and concert halls, the Kulturforum near Potsdamer Platz is a place of art, culture and research that is exceptional in its enormous diversity.

After the Second World War and the division of the city, the vision of establishing the cultural center of West Berlin was to be realized here. Planning and execution of this project began in the late 1950s. By the time the city was reunified in 1990, the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Kunstgewerbemuseum had been built for the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. After that, due to the new situation in many respects, such as the merging of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin in the eastern and western parts of the city under one roof, the architectural designs for the Gemäldegalerie, the Kupferstichkabinett, the Kunstbibliothek and the special exhibition halls underwent changes.

The collections of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (National Museums in Berlin) that house works from the European modern era are displayed at the Kulturforum. In terms of content and time, they are thus linked to the exhibitions on Berlin's Museum Island. The magnificent, world-famous art history collections of the Gemäldegalerie, Kunstbibliothek, Kupferstichkabinett, Kunstgewerbemuseum and Neue Nationalgalerie visualize the history of ideas from the early modern period to the present day and invite visitors to experience this diversity and uniqueness. A program of events tailored to different interests and changing special exhibitions on key themes in European art and cultural history make a decisive contribution to the appeal of the Kulturforum.

As part of the further development of Berlin's museum landscape, there are plans to construct a new building for 20th century art in the immediate vicinity of the Mies van der Rohe building. This will create an urgently needed exhibition space at the Kulturforum: In the interplay between these two buildings, the collection of the Nationalgalerie could be presented comprehensively and permanently - including works from the Pietzsch and Marx collections. In the long term, the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin are planning to move the Gemäldegalerie from the Kulturforum to its historical location, the Museumsinsel Berlin, in order to present it there in the future in close dialog with the sculpture collection under one roof. The idea of presenting sculpture and Old Master paintings together is to be made more visible in the Bode Museum by then.