The urban context of museums
Part 1: the Altes Museum, Berlin
MúzeumCafé 15.
A museum’s architecture and the forms of its spaces represent a far more complex issue than simply what is exhibited. The increasing significance of a museum as an institution with its own architecture is marked by the fact that the spectacle of still empty buildings is frequent and their opening attracts public attention. That happened in Berlin in 1999 with Daniel Libeskind’s Jüdisches Museum and the Neues Museum, originally designed by Friedrich August Stüler and opened in 1840, which was reconstructed by David Chipperfield in 2009. Sasha Waltz & Guests held performances in both then empty buildings and the museums soon became symbols of post-unification Berlin and among Germany’s most visited museums. The urbanistic significance of constructing the Museuminsel by 2015 is increasing, hence the issue of the Neues Museum’s reconstruction points far beyond itself.
The Altes Museum. At the stage of planning and construction the museum building expressing Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s radical aesthetic and theoretical concepts was already linked to ideas of forming Berlin’s urban space entertained by the emperor, his chief architect and the liberal, pro-reform Prussian bureaucracy. Schinkel’s task was to create and form the space. The formation of this new cultural-political environment was closely linked to the political reform affecting the balance of power, independently of the fact that some buildings were later destroyed. In the age of Romanticism there were two evident possibilities: Gothic style corresponding to Hegel’s spirit and Greek architecture representing the classical tradition. It shouldn’t be forgotten that Hegel, who was a close friend of Schinkel, held his lectures on aesthetics at the time and it is not difficult to see the connection between Hegelian ideas and the Altes Museum’s architecture, its colossal order and its relationship to both open and enclosed space. With respect to Berlin Mitte, Classical Greek patterns played the leading role in Schinkel’s plans. Correspondingly, his restrained Neue Wache of 1818 echoed a Greek temple and was later expropriated in every era – by Hitler as well as the GDR. Schinkel’s Schlossbrücke linking the Unter den Linden with the Royal Palace opened in 1824, but he did not live to see its full completion with the erection of statues in 1857. By determining the museum’s original architectural context the demolished buildings of Packhof on the bank of the Kupfergraben played an important role in the construction of the Neues Museum. The Bode and the Pergamon Museum replaced the former buildings. The Bauakademie, which was almost entirely destroyed during the war, was built along the Kupfergraben to the right of the Unter den Linden. Then the GDR’s Ministry of International Affairs replaced the building, which had incorporated Schinkel’s experience in England. Since the demolition of the ministry building a campaign has been underway to reconstruct the original. The Altes Museum itself looked out to the garden of the Schloss and the ‘Prussian drill-ground’ and the transformation of Museuminsel behind it into a cultural area and an intellectual centre only began after 1840. And it must not be forgotten that the Dome recalling the monumental world of the late 19th century stood between the Royal Palace and the museum. For decades those three buildings defined the Lustgarten and the area before the palace, which is still in the crossfire of dispute. The plan for an independent art museum was first raised by Aloys Hirt but war intervened. In the 1820s the idea of an art museum was again raised, first in the framework of the art academy then, following Schinkel’s proposal, a separate building was constructed. Appropriate exhibition of the paintings, which were taken by Napoleon but eventually regained, as well as the continuously growing royal, the Giustiniani and Solly collections was a key issue for the reform bureaucracy.