Hamburger Bahnhof

After a lenghty reconstruction by architect Josef Paul Kleihues the Hamburger Bahnhof reopened in November 2nd 1996 as Museum für Gegenwart. With the exception of the east wing or Kleihueshalle, which is built in the style of a lofty, barrel-vaulted Grande Galerie, the building still stands as one of the earliest railway termini to have been built in the middle of the 19th century. At the beginning of the 20th century the structure was converted to become a museum for transport and construction. The architecture of the building with its impressive neo-classical façade flanked by two towers, its great industrial hall at the entrance and the ranges along side the inner courtyard garden all got to make the house a particular attraction for every visitor to Berlin.

The impressiveness of the museum’s exterior stems not only from the clear historicist style of the façade, but above all from the brilliant bi-chromatic light installation designed by American artist Dan Flavin, which bathes the loggia of the main façade as well as the junction to the wings flanking the courtyard in blue and green neon light.

The Hamburger Bahnhof is the Nationalgalerie’s third institution and was named Museum für Gegenwart after the Gallery’s former department for contemporary art which opened at the Kronprinzen-Palais Unter den Linden in 1919 and which was closed down by the Nazis in 1937.
Following in this progressive tradition, a conscious decision was made to fix the scope of the museum’s collections to art since 1960. The choice of the Hamburger Bahnhof as the permanent home for Erich Marx’s private collection not only provided the impetus for a lavish redevelopment and restoration of the museum, but also served to illustrate the concept underlying the collection most impressively in the opening exhibition of 1996, through the outstanding series of works by Joseph Beuys, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly. Taking its lead from these important pioneers of crossing the boundaries that separate traditional art forms, the museum’s exhibitions and programmes have always focussed on the interdisciplinary nature of contemporary art. The Nationalgalerie’s collection stands out in the field of an extended understanding of art, particularly as regards its holdings of artists’ rooms such as those by John Cage, Bill Viola, Peter Campus, Wolf Vostell, Rebecca Horn, Carolee Schneeman, Reinhard Mucha, Marcel Broodthaers, Fritz Rahmann, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Johan Grimonperez or Aernout Mik. Their works are presented in changing exhibitions at the Hamburger Bahnhof. In 2002 it was extended significantly by the acquisition of Egidio Marzonas’s study collection of Concept Art and Arte Povera. Film works are an additional focus of the Nationalgalerie’s more recent collections. This focus was further emphasised with the arrival of the Joseph Beuys Media Archive and Mike Steiner’s donation of his collection of 1970s video art.

The former Lehrter Bahnhof goods depot has been converted to form a west wing, the so-called Rieckhallen, adjoining the main building to the north and housing the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection, on loan for a period of several years. Opening in 2004 it extended the museum by a further 6000 sqm producing a total exhibition space of 13000 sqm. The museum is presenting this collection of approximately 2000 superlative works of contemporary European and North American art in changing thematic and monographic exhibitions.

With its collection of works dating from the 1960s right up to the present day and its varied programme of exhibitions, the Museum für Gegenwart in the Hamburger Bahnhof is one of the world’s largest and most important museums of contemporary art.