Museum Barberini

The Museum Barberini is an art museum located in Potsdam, Germany, that opened to the public on January 23, 2017. Situated in the reconstructed Palast Barberini on the Alter Markt, the institution presents exhibitions ranging from the Old Masters to contemporary art, with a pronounced emphasis on Impressionist painting. The museum is centered around the collection of its founder and patron, Hasso Plattner, and presents three temporary exhibitions per year featuring international loans, alongside shorter rotating gallery displays known as art histories. Under the direction of Ortrud Westheider, the museum has quickly become a significant center for Impressionist landscape painting and a major cultural institution in Potsdam.

The museum's collection and exhibition program span from the Old Masters to contemporary art, with a primary focus on Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and Neo-Impressionism. The core of the institution is the Hasso Plattner Foundation collection, which features over a hundred works by French artists from the 1860s to the early twentieth century. Additional areas of focus include American Modernism, painting after 1989, and art from the German Democratic Republic. The GDR collection, which still occupies a marginalized position in German art history, was the subject of one of the museum's opening exhibitions. The museum organizes three major temporary exhibitions annually, prepared by academic conferences, supplemented by rotating art history displays that recontextualize works from the permanent collection.

The permanent collection is distinguished by its extensive holdings of French Impressionism, particularly the works of Claude Monet, of which the museum holds thirty-eight. This constitutes the largest collection of Monet paintings outside of Paris. Key works include Monet's Grainstacks from his 1890-1891 series, which Plattner acquired at Sotheby's in New York in May 2019, as well as The Palazzo Contarini and Water Lilies. Other notable Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works include Gustave Caillebotte's The Bridge at Argenteuil and the Seine and Rue Halevy, View from a Sixth Floor, and Paul Signac's The Port at Sunset, Opus 236. The collection also features works by Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Maurice de Vlaminck, Berthe Morisot, and Henri-Edmond Cross. Additionally, the museum holds a significant collection of GDR art, and a monumental cast of Wolfgang Mattheuer's sculpture The Century Step is installed in the inner courtyard.

The Museum Barberini is housed in the reconstructed Palast Barberini, located on the Alter Markt in the historic center of Potsdam. The original 1770s structure was designed by Carl von Gontard in a classicistic-baroque style inspired by the Roman Palazzo Barberini. For the 2013 to 2016 reconstruction, the architectural firm Hilmer, Sattler, and Albrecht meticulously recreated the historical sandstone facade true to the original, while designing the interior as a modern museum space. The original five floors were reconfigured into three exhibition levels, creating seventeen halls with a total area of 2,200 square meters, high ceilings, and oak parquet flooring. The building also includes an auditorium for lectures and performances, a museum shop, a cafe, and a restaurant.

The Museum Barberini is located at Humboldtstrasse 5-6 on the Alter Markt in Potsdam. The museum is open Wednesday through Monday from 10:00 to 19:00, with late entry at 17:30, and is closed on Tuesdays. Standard admission is 18 euros on weekends and holidays, and 16 euros on weekdays, with reduced tickets available for 10 euros. Admission is free for children and youth under 18, and for those under 25 every Thursday from 14:00 to 19:00. The building is fully wheelchair accessible, offering ground-level access, elevators with Braille and acoustic announcements, and wheelchair-accessible restrooms. Visitors can utilize audio guides available in multiple languages, the Barberini App, or a 4K Smart Wall to navigate the exhibitions, with virtual tours also available online.