Berggruen Museum

The Berggruen Museum is a museum of modern art in Berlin's Charlottenburg district, housing one of the world's most significant collections of classical modernism. Part of the National Gallery of Berlin, it displays the collection assembled over three decades by the German-born collector and dealer Heinz Berggruen, who returned to his native city in 1996 after sixty years in exile. The museum is renowned for its exceptional holdings of Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, Henri Matisse, Alberto Giacometti, and Georges Braque, which Berggruen sold to the city at a fraction of their market value in what he described as a "gesture of reconciliation."

Heinz Berggruen had established himself as an internationally respected dealer in Paris from 1947, opening a gallery on the Place Dauphine and organizing landmark exhibitions such as the first show of Paul Klee prints in 1950 and Matisse's cutouts in 1953. Before committing his collection to Berlin, Berggruen had made other significant loans and gifts: approximately ninety Klees went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1988, and in 1990 he arranged a five-year renewable loan of seventy-two works to the National Gallery in London, including pieces by Cézanne, Seurat, Van Gogh, Picasso, Braque, and Miró. Negotiations with Madrid's Reina Sofía museum fell through that same year. The collection arrived in Berlin in 1996 as a loan to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK). In December 2000, Berggruen completed the sale of 165 works to the SPK for the symbolic price of 253 million marks, against an estimated value of 1.5 billion marks. The museum opened to the public that year and attracted 1.5 million visitors in its first decade. Berggruen continued acquiring works after the opening, including Picasso's Houses on the Hill (Horta de Ebro) (1909) from the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In November 2005, he purchased Picasso's Nu Jaune (1907) for $13.7 million at Sotheby's in New York, a key study for Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. To mark the museum's tenth anniversary and his permanent retirement from public life at age 92, Berggruen donated Alberto Giacometti's Standing Woman III (1960) in December 2006, having purchased the two-metre bronze that had been on loan in the rotunda. He died in Paris on 23 February 2007. In July 2007, his heirs announced a further gift of 50 works, and in May 2008, another 70 paintings were added. The museum closed for extensive renovation on 5 September 2022, with reopening planned for 2026. During the closure, parts of the collection have been exhibited at the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo (2022), the National Museum of Art in Osaka (2022), UCCA Edge in Shanghai (2023), and the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris (2024). Gabriel Montua has served as director since 2018.

The collection centres on Pablo Picasso, with more than 100 exhibits spanning paintings, sculptures, gouaches,相承 and drawings that cover all periods of his creative activity, from early works such as Au café (1902) through cubist landmarks to later masterpieces. Paul Klee is represented by over 60 pictures, reflecting Berggruen's deep personal appreciation for the artist's delicate and refined watercolours, paintings, and drawings. Henri Matisse appears with more than 20 works, including more than half a dozen of his celebrated cutouts, alongside smaller paintings, collages, and drawings that demonstrate his graphic facility. Alberto Giacometti's sculptural ensembles include Standing Woman III and the rare animal sculpture Le Chat (1951). The core collection is rounded out by examples of African sculpture, acknowledging the debt of cubism to non-Western art, as well as works by Georges Braque and Paul Cézanne. The collection as a whole offers a comprehensive survey of twentieth-century avant-garde movements, with particular depth in the interwar period and the development of modernist painting and sculpture.

Among the signature works are Picasso's Nu Jaune (1907), the gouache study for Les Demoiselles d'Avignon acquired in 2005 for $13.7 million, and his 1909 painting Houses on the Hill (Horta de Ebro), purchased from the Museum of Modern Art. The Portrait of Georges Braque (1909-1910) exemplifies the cubist dialogue between the two artists, while Picasso's sculptural innovations are represented by Tête de Fernande (1909). The pastel Nu assis s'essuyant le pied (1921) reveals his engagement with classical antiquity, and the Portrait of Dora Maar with Green Nails (1936) counts among the powerful female portraits. Matisse's cutouts, including works such as Intérieur d'atelier à Nice and Le Cahier bleu, demonstrate his late graphic inventiveness. The 2011 acquisition of Les Femmes d'Alger ("Version L," 1955) for $21.4 million significantly strengthened the Picasso holdings. Giacometti's Standing Woman III (1960), the two-metre bronze donated by Berggruen in 2006, has become an emblematic presence in the collection.

The museum occupies the West Stüler Building on Schloßstraße, directly opposite Charlottenburg Palace in the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf district. The building forms part of the architectural ensemble facing the palace, with the Prinz-Albrecht-Denkmal by sculptors Eugen Boermel and Conrad Freyberg standing on the central promenade of Schloßstraße since 1901. To accommodate expansion, the state of Berlin donated the adjacent Kommandantenhaus to the SPK for its fiftieth anniversary. Following an architectural competition in 2008, the Berlin office Kuehn Malvezzi designed a steel and glass pergola connecting the two listed buildings, completed in 2013 at a cost of 4.2 million euros for interior and exterior work, with the federal government covering construction costs. The museum reopened on 16 March 2013. The Stüler Building's rotunda notably housed Giacometti's Standing Woman III during its period as a loan. A historical information plaque installed in 2013 as part of the commemorative year "Destroyed Diversity" documents the building's use as a leadership school for the security police from 1937 during the National Socialist period.

The Berggruen Museum is located in Berlin's Charlottenburg district, opposite Charlottenburg Palace, and operates as part of the National Gallery of Berlin under the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. The museum is currently closed for extensive renovation since 5 September 2022, with reopening anticipated in 2026. During this period, portions of the collection are touring internationally. The museum's permanent presentation is titled "Berggruen Collection, Picasso and His Time." In 2019, the museum recorded approximately 74,000 visitors. The Friends of the Berggruen Museum society (Förderkreis Museum Berggruen e. V.), founded in 2007, includes Berggruen's widow Bettina, his children Nicolas, Olivier, John, and Helen, and prominent figures such as W. Michael Blumenthal, Michael Naumann, and Simon de Pury, with the SPK assuming running costs. The official website is available in German and English at www.smb.museum/mb.