By A.J. GOLDMANN
Berlin
This city's revered Old Masters, a trove of more than 3,000 paintings that includes masterworks by Caravaggio, Bruegel, Titian and Vermeer, has collided with a planned gift of 20th-century art that the city may be in danger of losing.
Ever since June 12, when the German Parliament voted to allocate €10 million ($12.8 million) to retrofit the building now housing the Gemäldegalerie—Berlin's Painting Gallery—for the city's collection of 20th-century art, the proposal has sparked heated debate among art historians, conservators and museum directors world-wide.
The Gemäldegalerie—Berlin's Painting Gallery
In 2010, Heiner and Ulla Pietzsch promised to donate to Berlin their $190 million collection of about 150 Surrealist and Abstract Expressionist works on the condition that it be integrated into the city's collection of 20th-century art. It has been widely reported that the Pietzsch donation was also made on the condition that the collection be put fully on display, a stipulation that Hermann Parzinger, president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which oversees Berlin's State Museums, denies. Mr. Pietzsch's intention was to help "the state museums finally get a gallery for the 20th century," Mr. Parzinger explained in an interview.
Even before any Pietzsch additions, Berlin's 20th-century art collection had already outgrown Mies van der Rohe's New National Gallery, built in 1968. The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation thought it had a solution to that space crunch: relocating the Old Masters and the Gemäldegalerie to Museum Island, Berlin's famed consortium of museums and a Unesco World Heritage Site, thus freeing up for modern art their former quarters in the area known as the Kulturforum. "It's not ust for the Pietzsch collection. It's for our whole collection," Mr. Parzinger claimed.
But in the German press, the plan has been represented as a clash between the old and the new, pitting Rembrandt and Leonardo against Jackson Pollock and Joseph Beuys. According to an Aug. 29 interview with the German wire service DPA, Mr. Pietzsch is dismayed with the resulting controversy and has threatened to withdraw his gift if a viable plan is not proposed by early next year.
"Speaking for myself, this has never been a battle between the ancients and the moderns," said Jeffrey Hamburger, a professor of German art at Harvard who has started an online petition against the planned move. Mr. Hamburger and the more than 13,000 others who have signed the petition fear that many Old Masters currently on display would go into storage for a decade or more, since the existing venue proposed for their relocation, the Bode Museum, which now houses the city's Sculpture Gallery, is too small to accommodate both collections.
In a telephone interview, Mr. Hamburger said that he is not categorically opposed to reuniting the painting and sculpture collections on Museum Island. He also agreed that Berlin needs more room for 20th-century art than the New National Gallery can provide. It was there that the Pietzsches' collection was shown in 2009. The success of that exhibition convinced the couple to donate its works by Max Ernst, René Magritte, Pollock, Mark Rothko and others to Berlin. While well-heeled collectors in the U.S. sometimes decide to build their own museums, such arrangements are less common in Europe, where there is traditionally stronger government support for museums.
When Berlin was divided, so were its art collections. It was only in 1998 that a new museum opened to house the complete Picture Gallery in the Kulturforum, which had been laid out during the Cold War as a Western analogue to Museum Island, 2½ miles away in what was then East Germany. Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation officials say that keeping the Pietzsches happy has nothing to do with the planned move, which they call a realization of a longstanding wish to bring the Gemäldegalerie back to Museum Island.
Mr. Hamburger counters: "This is an idea that was floated [after reunification], that did not succeed, and that has continued to remain an idée fixe among certain past and present members of the foundation. But to speak of a plan is, I think, almost farcical."
But Mr. Parzinger insists that the move was always part of the "intellectual master plan" of Museum Island. The foundation wants to build a museum across from the Bode, on land owned by the Ministry of Culture that contains 19th-century army barracks, to house the collection of Northern European Art. Mr. Parzinger called it a "natural expansion" for the Bode Museum, put the cost of the new structure at €150 million, and said they might start building in 2017 or 2018.
"This new building will solve the problems of the three collections. It will allow the Old Masters and the sculptures to be shown together. It will allow at the Kulturforum a building to become available for the presentation of the modern collection," said Julien Chapuis, director of the Sculpture Gallery in an interview at the Bode.
Formerly the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, the Bode was built in 1904 to house the city's painting and sculpture collections and reopened in 2006 after a seven-year renovation. It now bears the name of its first director, Wilhelm von Bode, who was immensely influential in his display philosophy, which included mixed-media installations and period rooms.
Last year, the Bode assembled a blockbuster show, "The Renaissance Portrait," which traveled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. For Mr. Chapuis, the success of that exhibition, which displayed paintings and sculptures in tandem, is a compelling argument for integrating the two collections. But Mr. Hamburger said that the show, which included loans from the Uffizi and the Louvre, said more about "the logic of blockbuster exhibitions."
Uniting the collections on the island may also have to do with the low attendance rates at both institutions, which receive 250,000 visitors each annually. But Mr. Parzinger believes that the Old Masters deserve a home on Museum Island, where they will complete the survey of art from antiquity to the 19th-century and create a Berlin "Louvre" out of collections that were, for historical reasons, unable to be displayed together.
Berlin now has more than a billion euros of backlogged cultural construction projects. On Museum Island alone, those continuing or slated for the next several years include the controversial rebuilding of the Hohenzollern Palace, a new visitor center and extensive renovations at the Pergamon Museum.
These projects are part of the reconstruction of the city since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Mr. Chapuis said that the achievements of the past 23 years make him optimistic. "Nowhere else in Europe has there been more public money invested in cultural projects," he said. Mr. Parzinger said that the Gemädlegalerie would not close until there is concrete plan, and added that the foundation hopes to put as few artworks into storage as possible, partially in response to the controversy: "If we have this interim, it has to be for a very short span of years. My colleagues at the Bode say that they can show about 50% of both collections together. If we can find another [temporary] space and, in the end, can show up to 70% or 80% for a few years, then I think we can do this."
But for Mr. Hamburger, good intentions aren't enough. He said that moving "one of world's very greatest collections" required a realistic proposal that is, as of yet, lacking. "Given the German reputation for planning and efficiency, it's just unbelievable," he said.
He insisted that a collection that was "largely hidden from view for half a century" should not be allowed to go into storage after 14 years. "This is a collection that has seen more than its share of bad luck and been a political pawn for far too long. It should be treated with greater respect."
Mr. Goldmann writes about European arts and culture. He lives in Berlin.