James Simon Gallery

The James Simon Gallery (German: James-Simon-Galerie) is the central visitor center and entrance building for Berlin's Museum Island, located between the reconstructed Neues Museum and the Kupfergraben arm of the Spree river. Designed by British architect David Chipperfield and opened in 2019, it serves as the sixth building on the UNESCO World Heritage site and functions as a gateway and orientation hub for the island's museums. The gallery is named after Henri James Simon (1851-1932), a Jewish industrialist and art patron whose major donations, including the iconic bust of Nefertiti, brought worldwide recognition to the Berlin State Museums. The choice of Simon as namesake also carries symbolic weight: it restores visibility to Jewish patrons whose contributions were erased from German museums during the Third Reich.

The gallery's origins lie in the 1999 Masterplan for Museum Island, which identified the need for a central entrance building to manage growing visitor numbers. David Chipperfield won the architectural competition in 1999 with an initial design featuring plain cubes of steel and satin glass, but this provoked significant public protest. Planning was halted in 2002 when federal authorities, as builder and financier, stopped the project due to exploding renovation costs for the Pergamonmuseum. In November 2006, the German Bundestag finally approved 73 million euros for the entrance building. After renewed criticism, Chipperfield revised his design in December 2006, and again in June 2007, incorporating a stone basement framed by a modern continuation of Friedrich August Stüler's colonnades. A citizens' initiative led by prominent figures including Lea Rosh and Günther Jauch sought a referendum against the project in early 2007, but disbanded on July 2, 2007. Foundation work proved extraordinarily complex, requiring 1,200 piles and work by divers due to the building's location on the Kupfergraben canal; the cornerstone was laid on October 18, 2013. Construction lasted from 2009 to 2018, nearly ten years. The original cost estimate of 71 million euros ultimately rose to 134 million euros. The gallery was ceremonially opened by Chancellor Angela Merkel on July 12, 2019, with public opening on July 13, 2019, drawing 26,000 visitors on its first day.

Unlike the historic museums it serves, the James Simon Gallery does not hold a permanent collection in the traditional sense. Its 10,900 square meters of built space, including 4,600 square meters of usable floor area, are dedicated to visitor services, orientation, and temporary exhibitions. The gallery's primary function is to receive, orient, and distribute visitors across Museum Island's main circuit, similar in operational concept to the Louvre Pyramid. It houses a 600-square-meter space for temporary exhibitions, which has hosted shows on archaeological themes including 'James Simon. Die Kunst des sinnvollen Gebens' (July 2019), 'Iran. Kunst und Kultur aus fünf Jahrtausenden' (2021-2022), 'Archäologische Schätze aus Usbekistan' (2023-2024), and 'Elephantine. Insel der Jahrtausende' (2024). The building also accommodates a 300-seat auditorium, media center, bookstore, museum shop, café, and restaurant facilities serving all of Museum Island.

The James Simon Gallery does not possess permanent holdings of art or artifacts. Its significance lies rather in its role as the physical and conceptual gateway to the collections of Museum Island, including the Pergamonmuseum, Neues Museum, Alte Nationalgalerie, and others. The gallery's namesake, Henri James Simon, was himself one of the most important donors to the Berlin museums: he financed the Egyptian excavation that yielded the bust of Nefertiti, among many other gifts. The building thus stands as a monument to patronage rather than a repository of objects, though its temporary exhibition program has presented significant archaeological and art-historical material drawn from the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin collections.

The gallery occupies the site of the former Neue Packhof, designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel and demolished in 1938. Chipperfield's final design responds to this layered history with a long, narrow building running parallel to the Spree canal, organized across five levels. Visitors ascend a broad staircase in three flights to an elevated plateau lined with 70 white concrete columns, each nearly nine meters high but less than 30 centimeters thick. The colonnade has drawn critical commentary: while praised in The Guardian and Architectural Digest, some observers noted similarities to Albert Speer's constructions at the Nazi Party Rally Grounds in Nuremberg. Architecture critic Nikolaus Bernau compared the arrangement of building elements to the temple configuration on the ascent to the Athenian Acropolis, dubbing the gallery 'Berlin's Nike Temple.' The auditorium features concrete walls cast in pleated acoustic folds. A colonnade leads from the Pergamonmuseum almost to the Lustgarten along the Spree, and an underground connection, the Archaeological Promenade, links to the Neues Museum. The building received the Architekturpreis Beton and the DAM Preis für Architektur in Deutschland in 2020.

The James Simon Gallery is located in Berlin's Bezirk Mitte on Museum Island, with its official entrance positioned between the Neues Museum and the Kupfergraben. It is owned and operated by the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, under the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Currently, it provides the sole entrance to the Pergamonmuseum and an underground entrance to the Neues Museum. Upon completion of the Masterplan, it will connect via the Archaeological Promenade to four of Museum Island's five museums, channeling anticipated annual visitation of up to four million people. The building offers barrier-free access via elevator as well as the stepped exterior staircase. In 2019, its opening year, the gallery recorded 338,000 visitors. Information, ticketing, cloakroom facilities, and dining are available on site.