Niederkirchnerstraße 7, 10963
The Martin-Gropius-Bau, the former Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin, is an
exhibition center in the Berlin district of Kreuzberg, which houses
large temporary exhibitions. The building is one of the most important
museum buildings in Germany from the 19th century and is located at
Niederkirchnerstraße 7/Stresemannstraße 110. It is located directly on
the border to the Mitte district and was right next to the Berlin Wall
on the West Berlin side until 1990.
The Berliner Festspiele have
been running the Martin-Gropius-Bau since 2001 on behalf of the Federal
Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. The heads of seven
institutions advise the program:
Berlin Festival in the KBB GmbH
Federal Agency for Civic Education
Foundation German Historical
Museum, Berlin
Foundation House of History, Bonn
House of World
Cultures at KBB GmbH
Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic
of Germany, Bonn
State Museums in Berlin - Prussian cultural heritage
The respective organizers are responsible for the exhibitions. The
director of the exhibition center from February 1, 2018 to September
2022 was the art historian Stephanie Rosenthal, who previously worked as
a curator at the Hayward Gallery in London. Her long-time predecessor in
office was Gereon Sievernich.
The building was erected in 1877-1881 according to plans and under
the direction of the architects Martin Gropius (a great-uncle of the
Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius) and Heino Schmieden in the style of the
Italian Renaissance. Of the other museums, such as the Museum of
Ethnology, which were also known as the Museum Quarter, which were
closely related in terms of content and location, it was the only one
that survived.
The initiative for the construction came from the
association Deutsches Gewerbemuseum founded in 1867, of which Gropius
was also a member. Conceived as an arts and crafts museum with a library
and adjoining educational institution, from 1922 the building housed the
museum for prehistory and early history, as well as the East Asian art
collection and, in a building to the east, an arts and crafts school.
Young people could learn carving or carpentry here.
During an
Allied air raid on Berlin city center in World War II, the museum
building suffered severe damage in 1945, and demolition of the ruins
after the end of the war seemed inevitable. The intervention of Walter
Gropius halted the project and eventually led to the building being
listed as a historical monument in 1966, bearing the name of its main
architect.
Reconstruction began in 1978 under the direction of
the architect Winnetou Kampmann and his wife Ute Weström. Since the
Berlin Wall ran directly in front of the main portal, access was moved
to the southern rear. They also built galleries on the second floor.
During the construction work, the house was reopened in 1981 with a
Schinkel exhibition.
Extensive renovation and conversion work
with federal funds took place after the fall of the Berlin Wall and
after German reunification, between 1998 and 2000. The original entrance
situation on the north side was restored. In addition, the building
received modern air conditioning for the exhibition rooms on the ground
floor and first floor. The planning of the conversion was in the hands
of the architectural community Hilmer & Sattler and Albrecht as well as
Volkhausen and Lubkoll.
The house was reopened in 1999 with an
exhibition on the 50-year history of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Between 2010 and 2012, necessary renovations and modernizations were
made possible as part of the federal government's second economic
stimulus package. The work included the air conditioning of the
exhibition rooms on the second floor, the renovation of the facade, the
installation of an additional passenger elevator to improve barrier-free
access to all floors and the installation of a photovoltaic system on
the roof. The renovation and modernization work was planned and
implemented by the Berlin architects Pitz & Hoh.
When she took
office in February 2018, the new director, in consultation with those
responsible for culture, had the sun protection films removed from all
vertical glass surfaces in the atrium, so that a lot of daylight can now
enter again. To the right of the entrance area, the new Artists in
Residence project will be presented in the former lecture hall and
current exhibition space based on the director's idea. International
artists who have been invited to practice here alternately each year.
The bookstore was renovated and the restaurant was modernized by a
new operator. There, the Berlin company Infarm, in cooperation with the
operator, installed growing cabinets in which various types of herbs and
vegetables grow in front of the guests and are immediately processed on
site. The restaurant interior is reserved in black and white.
Since 2018, the atrium has been accessible to anyone who is interested,
even without visiting the exhibition.
The palace-like four-storey building has an almost square floor plan.
Its structure forms a cube, in the middle of which is the atrium with
side lengths of around 40 m × 30 m and a height of around 26 m. Later
assessments by building experts see the strong cubic form of the
building, the three-zone façade structure and the shape of the windows
as being strongly influenced by Schinkel's construction methods, in
particular the model of the Bauakademie, as well as ideas by Gottfried
Semper. Architecture, building sculpture and painting form a total work
of art that refers to the original use of the building. Architectural
historian Manfred Klinkott assessed the museum building as follows: "The
exhibition building itself was intended as an architectural model that,
through the use of various manufacturing processes, should encompass
many branches of craftsmanship and unite them in a magnificent
composition."
The north and south sides of the house – each
arranged parallel to the (then) Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse – are divided
into seven building axes, the east and west facades show symmetrically
arranged eight axes. The visible side is the north facade, in which the
gabled portal forms the center via a wide access staircase with a
driveway. This facade also has particularly rich sculptural decorations
made of sandstone and terracotta. The south side, on the other hand, is
hardly decorated, but has a risalit-like staircase.
The base of
the ground floor is covered with Belgian granite. The upper floors are
faced with light and dark red bricks. The fourth floor is a mezzanine
floor, the spaces between the windows are decorated with golden mosaics
and the coats of arms of the German states. The flat roof is finished
with a cantilevered terracotta cornice.
Large-format three-part
windows on the exhibition floors with flat triangular gables placed
above them shape the character of the exhibition building.
The
sculptural works are by Ludwig Brunow, Otto Geyer, Emil Hundrieser, Otto
Lessing (coat of arms and friezes), Rudolf Siemering and Louis
Sussmann-Hellborn. Ernst Ewald and Friedrich Geselschap also provided
designs for the decoration of the mezzanine floor.
According to
experts, the arrangement inside the building with vestibule, atrium and
the rear central staircase should be based on the Vienna Museum of Art
and Industry, which was planned by Heinrich von Ferstel in 1867-1871.
Here, too, numerous decorative elements surprise the visitors, in
the production of which the above-mentioned artists were also involved.
The exhibition rooms have easy-to-clean terrazzo floors or are covered
with colored tiles and carpet-like mosaic patterns.
Architectural
historical tours are offered regularly in the house.
1881: First German exhibition of Priam's Treasure (1881–1885)
1884: The competition for the Berlin Museum Island
1923: The Museum
of East Asian Art opened in the house on October 9, 1923.
1929: Film
und Foto, a traveling exhibition by the Deutscher Werkbund about the
photography of the New Vision and the New Objectivity
1981: After
three years of reconstruction, the former Kunstgewerbemuseum was
reopened as the Martin-Gropius-Bau.
Karl Friedrich Schinkel - works
and effect. (First exhibition after the building was rebuilt.)
Prussia - an attempt at a balance sheet
1982: Zeitgeist. An
exhibition by Zeitgeist e. V
1984: Shows at the International
Building Exhibition
1987: Exhibition for the 750th anniversary of
Berlin
1988/1989: Stations of modernity. The most important art
exhibitions of the 20th century in Germany
1993: American Art of the
20th Century
1997/1998: Images of Germany - Art from a Divided
Country
1999: Reopening exhibition
2000: Codex Leicester – from
January 30 to March 12, 2000, together with the 96-drawing cycle of
drawings for the two sketchbooks Codices Madrid by Leonardo da Vinci,
rediscovered in 1965 by Joseph Beuys (1921–1986). Bill Gates paid $30.8
million for the manuscript at auction in 1994, making it the most
expensive of all time.
2001: Christo and Jeanne-Claude - Early Works
and Wrapped Reichstag
2002/2003: People - Times - Spaces. Archeology
in Germany
2003/2004: Berlin – Moscow / Moscow – Berlin
2005/2006 Rundlederwelten, with a view to the 2006 World Cup.
2006:
In Franck Goddio's exhibition Egypt's sunken treasures, from May 13 to
September 4, 450,000 visitors came to the Martin-Gropius-Bau.
2008:
On the occasion of the exhibition Power and Friendship. Berlin – St.
Petersburg From 1800 to 1860, two bronze horse tamers by Peter Clodt von
Jürgensburg were presented in the atrium.
2009: Sixty years. Sixty
works. Art from the Federal Republic of Germany.
2009/2010 Photo
exhibition by Hamburg Stern photographer Harald Schmitt – seconds that
became history. Photographs from the end of state socialism
to June
2010: Treasures of the Aga Khan Museum.
2010:
Olafur Eliasson –
Inside City Outside
Frida Kahlo – Retrospective
Teotihuacán -
Mexico's Mysterious City of Pyramids
2011: Poland – Germany. Door
to door. 1000 years of art and history
2012: The Lost Album,
exhibition of photographs by American film actor Dennis Hopper
2013:
Anish Kapoor. Kapoor in Berlin[12]
2013/2014: Barbara Klemm –
Photographs 1968–2013
2014: Ai Weiwei
2014: David Bowie
2014/2015: The Vikings
2015: Dance of the Ancestors – Art from the
Sepik in Papua New Guinea. Catalog.
2015/2016: Germaine Krull –
Photographs
2016: 10 years Villa Massimo
2016: Günter Brus –
fault zones. Catalog.
2016: Ancient Art - Rock Drawings from the
Frobenius Collection. Catalog.
2016: Lee Miller – photographs,
catalogue.
2016: The Maya – Language of Beauty
2016: Dissenting
votes. Art in the GDR 1976-1989 (curators: Eugen Blume and Christoph
Tannert)
2016/2017: Pina Bausch and the dance theater
2017: The
Luther Effect (an exhibition of the German Historical Museum Berlin).
Catalog.
2017: Jürgen Teller. Enjoy Your Life! (an exhibition at the
Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany, Bonn),
curator Susanne Kleine.
2017: Franz Kafka. The whole process.
2017: Lucian Freud "Closer".
2017/2018: Wenzel Hablik. Expressionist
utopias. Catalog.
2017/2018: Jews, Christians and Muslims. In the
dialogue of the sciences. Catalog.
2018/2019: turbulent times.
Archeology in Germany
2018/2019: Inventory Gurlitt - an art dealer
under National Socialism
2019: And Berlin Will Always Need You. Art,
Craft and Concept Made in Berlin
2019: Garden of Earthly Delights.
Catalog.
2019: Walk through walls. Catalog.
2021: Yayoi Kusama: A
Retrospective
2021/22: Thea Djordjadze: all building as making,
curated by Julienne Lorz.