Kupferstichkabinett Berlin

The Kupferstichkabinett, or Museum of Prints and Drawings, is a museum of graphic art in Berlin, Germany. As part of the Berlin State Museums, it operates within the Kulturforum on Potsdamer Platz in the Tiergarten district. It is the largest museum of graphic art in Germany and is widely regarded as one of the four most important collections of its kind worldwide. The museum's inventory encompasses over 500,000 prints and approximately 110,000 individual works on paper, including drawings, pastels, watercolors, and oil sketches. Spanning a millennium of art, culture, and media history, its holdings range from high medieval codices to contemporary art.

The origins of the collection trace back to 1652, when Elector Frederick William I of Brandenburg acquired around 2,500 drawings and watercolors for the royal court library. Systematic collecting began with the museum's official founding in 1831. Initially housed in the Altes Museum as the third department of the Royal Prussian Museums alongside the Antikensammlung and the Gemaldegalerie, the collection expanded significantly through major private acquisitions in the 19th century. The most notable was the 1835 purchase of the Nagler graphic collection, which contained over 50,000 prints and drawings, including works by Albrecht Durer and Matthias Grunewald. Further major acquisitions included the collections of the Pacetti brothers in 1843, the Dukes of Hamilton in 1882, and Adolf von Beckerath in 1902. In 1937, the Nazis confiscated over 800 works as degenerate art, though curator Willy Kurth managed to preserve over 1,000 of the targeted pieces. The institution absorbed the National Gallery's graphics collection in 1986, which had focused on rebuilding the decimated 20th-century prints, particularly German Expressionism. Following the political division of Berlin after World War II, the separated East and West collections were reunited when the museum moved to a new building at the Kulturforum in March 1994.

The collection emphasizes European drawings and printed graphics from the Middle Ages to the present, recently expanding to include American art. It is particularly renowned for its unparalleled scope and quality in early Italian, Old German, and Netherlandish drawings, as well as 19th-century German draughtsmanship. Beyond drawings and prints, the holdings encompass illuminated manuscripts, sketchbooks, topographical views, printing plates, and portfolio works. Due to the light-sensitivity and sheer scale of the works on paper, the museum cannot mount a permanent display. Instead, it presents rotating temporary exhibitions and allows visitors to request original artworks for viewing in a study room. Some works on paper are also stored thematically in other Berlin institutions, such as the Ethnological Museum, the Asian Art Museum, the Art Library, and the Scharf-Gerstenberg Collection.

The museum's early masterworks include Sandro Botticelli's illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy, acquired in 1882, and significant groups of drawings by Albrecht Durer, Matthias Grunewald, Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and Rembrandt. Nineteenth-century highlights feature the private collections and estates of Adolph Menzel and Karl Friedrich Schinkel, along with substantial groups of works by Caspar David Friedrich and Carl Blechen. Modern and contemporary focal points include works by Edvard Munch, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Pablo Picasso, and Alberto Giacometti, as well as Pop Art by Richard Hamilton, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and Frank Stella, alongside Conceptual and Minimal art. Other specific treasures include a 15th-century hours book of Mary of Burgundy and Maximilian, Friedrich Gilly's 1796 plan for a monument to Frederick II of Prussia, and the recently acquired 'Kleiner Klebeband', a collection of rare German masterpieces from the late Gothic and early Renaissance periods. The collection continues to grow through acquisitions and donations, supported by the Graphische Gesellschaft zu Berlin, an association of friends of the museum active since 1997.

Since March 1994, the Kupferstichkabinett has been housed in a dedicated building at the Kulturforum on Potsdamer Platz. This relocation to the cultural center of Berlin allowed the previously divided East and West collections to be physically reunited under one roof. The Kulturforum site also places the museum in close proximity to other major collections of European art within the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, such as the Gemaldegalerie, the Kunstbibliothek, the Kunstgewerbemuseum, and the Neue Nationalgalerie.

The Kupferstichkabinett is located at Matthäikirchplatz 8, 10785 Berlin. It is open Wednesday through Friday from 10:00 to 18:00, and Saturday through Sunday from 11:00 to 18:00, remaining closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. The study hall operates Tuesday through Friday from 09:00 to 16:00, and admission to the study hall is free of charge. General admission to the special exhibition room costs 8.00 euros, or 4.00 euros reduced, while a combined ticket for all Kulturforum exhibitions is 22.00 euros, or 11.00 euros reduced. Children and young people under 18 enter free. The museum is fully wheelchair accessible and can be reached via several bus lines stopping at the Philharmonie, Kulturforum, and nearby intersections. In 2019, the museum recorded approximately 46,000 visitors.