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MUSEUM

Inside Berlin’s newest addition to the UNESCO-listed Museum Island

After 20 years in the works, the James Simon Gallery, which pays homage to the Jewish patron of Berlin museums, is getting ready to launch in the capital this weekend.

Published: 11 July 2019 14:50 CEST
Inside Berlin's newest addition to the UNESCO-listed Museum Island
A view of Berlin's James Simon Gallery, set to open to the public soon. Photo: DPA

Set to open its doors to the public on Saturday, July 13th, Berlin’s James Simon Gallery will act as a visitor centre to the UNESCO World Heritage Site and the collections housed within its five museums – the Bode, the Altes, the Neues and the Pergamon Museums as well as the Alte Nationalgalerie.

READ ALSO: Artists battle expulsions as rents spike in Berlin

Designed by star architect Sir David Chipperfield, the James Simon Gallery has been in the works for around 20 years. The building features an auditorium that can sit 300 people, special exhibition spaces, a permanent exhibition and media installations, a gift shop, a café and restaurant, various services like ticket counters and cloakrooms, and a terrace along the Kuperfgraben canal.

Described as a “linking infrastructure” by Chipperfield, the building will also provide the only entrance to the Pergamon Museum until renovations are complete there and offer a second entrance to the Neues Museum.

 “It was not clear at the beginning what this building should be,” Chipperfield said on Wednesday. “It is clearly not another museum. It is an infrastructural building on one hand.

“It provides lots of facilities. But it is also a linking infrastructure. It connects the buildings together and provides orientation to the whole idea of Museum Island.” 

READ ALSO: Inside Weimar's new politically charged museum

Sir David Chipperfield outside the museum. Photo: DPA

The modern new building acts as a continuation of Museum Island structures. This is most clearly seen in the colonnade outside. The 19th-century colonnade, on which bullet scars from World War II are still clearly visible, originally ended at the Neues Museum. Chipperfield’s design has slimmer, sharper columns that meet the original ones, creating an interesting juxtaposition between history and the present.

The group of museums in the heart of Berlin attracts 2.5 million visitors a year.

Tributes paid to Jewish artists and patrons

The opening of the James Simon Gallery was described by museum officials in Berlin Wednesday as both a historical moment and important homage to one of the most important benefactors of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Berlin State Museums).

James Simon, a Jewish businessman, philanthropist and art collector, donated approximately 10,000 items to Berlin Museums. One of his most famous donations is the Neferti bust. Sometimes dubbed Berlin’s Mona Lisa, the Nefertiti bust is housed in the Neues Museum. Simon also contributed funds that led to key excavations in the Middle East, such as that of the Ishtar Gate of Babylon, which is on display in the Pergamon Museum. 

READ ALSO: Berlin inaugurates new Museum Island addition

Represented by Simon, the new visitor centre also pays tribute to other Jewish patrons and important members of Berlin society whose influence the Nazis tried to erase. “We want to do something to prevent us forgetting,” Hermann Parzinger, the president of the Preußicher Kulturbesitz, which oversees the city's museums, told reporters on Wednesday. 

Inside the gallery on Museum Island. Photo: DPA

One example of such a tribute is sculptor August Gaul’s “Reclining Lion” on display in the foyer. The statue was commissioned and owned by Jewish newspaper publisher and patron of the arts Rudolf Mosse in the early twentieth century. The statue survived World War II, stood for some time in the present Alte Nationalgalerie, and was restituted to the Lachmann-Mosse family in 2015 and reacquired by the Staatliche zu Museen in 2016.

Chancellor Angela Merkel is slated to officially open the building on Friday. On Saturday, the public will be able to walk through its doors and take part in a full-day of celebration and events.

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ART

African-born director’s new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

One of the rare African-born figures to head a German cultural institution, Bonaventure Ndikung is aiming to highlight post-colonial multiculturalism at a Berlin arts centre with its roots in Western hegemony.

Published: 8 July 2023 10:13 CEST
African-born director's new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

The “Haus der Kulturen der Welt” (House of World Cultures), or HKW, was built by the Americans in 1956 during the Cold War for propaganda purposes, at a time when Germany was still divided.

New director Ndikung said it had been located “strategically” so that people on the other side of the Berlin Wall, in the then-communist East, could see it.

This was “representing freedom” but “from the Western perspective”, the 46-year-old told AFP.

Now Ndikung, born in Cameroon before coming to study in Germany 26 years ago, wants to transform it into a place filled with “different cultures of the world”.

The centre, by the river Spree, is known locally as the “pregnant oyster” due to its sweeping, curved roof. It does not have its own collections but is home to exhibition rooms and a 1,000-seat auditorium.

It reopened in June after renovations, and Ndikung’s first project “Quilombismo” fits in with his aims of expanding the centre’s offerings.

The exhibition takes its name from the Brazilian term “Quilombo”, referring to the communities formed in the 17th century by African slaves, who fled to remote parts of the South American country.

Throughout the summer, there will also be performances, concerts, films, discussions and an exhibition of contemporary art from post-colonial societies across Africa, the Americas, Asia and Oceania.

‘Rethink the space’

“We have been trying to… rethink the space. We invited artists to paint walls… even the floor,” Ndikung said.

And part of the “Quilombismo” exhibition can be found glued to the floor -African braids laced together, a symbol of liberation for black people, which was created by Zimbabwean artist Nontsikelelo Mutiti.

According to Ndikung, African slaves on plantations sometimes plaited their hair in certain ways as a kind of coded message to those seeking to escape, showing them which direction to head.

READ ALSO: Germany hands back looted artefacts to Nigeria

His quest for aestheticism is reflected in his appearance: with a colourful suit and headgear, as well as huge rings on his fingers, he rarely goes unnoticed.

During his interview with AFP, Ndikung was wearing a green scarf and cap, a blue-ish jacket and big, sky-blue shoes.

With a doctorate in medical biology, he used to work as an engineer before devoting himself to art.

In 2010, he founded the Savvy Gallery in Berlin, bringing together art from the West and elsewhere, and in 2017 was one of the curators of Documenta, a prestigious contemporary art event in the German city of Kassel.

Convinced of the belief that history “has been written by a particular type of people, mostly white and men,” Ndikung has had all the rooms in the HKW renamed after women.

These are figures who have “done something important in the advancement of the world” but were “erased” from history, he added. Among them is Frenchwoman Paulette Nardal, born in Martinique in 1896.

She helped inspire the creation of the “negritude” movement, which aimed to develop black literary consciousness, and was the first black woman to study at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Reassessing history

Ndikung’s appointment at the HKW comes as awareness grows in Germany about its colonial past, which has long been overshadowed by the atrocities committed during the era of Adolf Hitler’s Nazis.

Berlin has in recent years started returning looted objects to African countries which it occupied in the early 20th century — Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Namibia and Cameroon.

“It’s long overdue,” said Ndikung.

He was born in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, into an anglophone family.

The country is majority francophone but also home to an anglophone minority and has faced deadly unrest in English-speaking areas, where armed insurgents are fighting to establish an independent homeland.

One of his dreams is to open a museum in Cameroon “bringing together historical and contemporary objects” from different countries, he said.

He would love to locate it in Bamenda, the capital of Cameroon’s restive Northwest region.

“But there is a war in Bamenda, so I can’t,” he says.

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