Pergamonmuseum | |
![]() Entrance area | |
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Established | 1930 |
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Location | Museum Island, Berlin, Germany |
Coordinates | 52°31′16″N 13°23′46″E / 52.52111°N 13.39611°E |
Type | Archaeology museum |
Public transit access | U: Museumsinsel (![]() |
Website | smb.museum/pergamonmuseum |
Part of | Museumsinsel (Museum Island), Berlin |
Criteria | Cultural: ii, iv |
Reference | 896 |
Inscription | 1999 (23rd Session) |
Area | 8.6 ha (21 acres) |
Buffer zone | 22.5 ha (56 acres) |
The Pergamon Museum (German: Pergamonmuseum; pronounced [ˈpɛʁ.ɡa.mɔn.muˌzeː.ʊm] ⓘ) is a listed building on the Museum Island in the historic centre of Berlin, Germany. It was built from 1910 to 1930 by order of Emperor Wilhelm II and according to plans by Alfred Messel and Ludwig Hoffmann in Stripped Classicism style.[1] As part of the Museum Island complex, the Pergamon Museum was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1999 because of its architecture and testimony to the evolution of museums as architectural and social phenomena.[2]
Prior to its closing in 2023, the Pergamon Museum was home to the Antikensammlung, including the famous Pergamon Altar, the Vorderasiatisches Museum and the Museum für Islamische Kunst.
In October 2023, the museum was completely closed for visitors, and is expected to remain mostly closed for 14 to 20 years – until 2037 to 2043 – for the execution of comprehensive renovation works. Its North Wing is expected to reopen in 2027.[3][4][5]
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Transcription
[MUSIC PLAYING] DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: I love Greek sculpture. I love the Archaic. I love the Classical and all of its restraint and harmony. But I have to tell you, I really love the Hellenistic. And the reason I do is because of two fragments from a great frieze from Pergamon. One has Athena at its center, and one has Zeus. DR. BETH HARRIS: And I can see why you love these sculptures. They combine what's most wonderful about ancient Greek sculpture-- the love of the body. But also the sense of expressiveness and drama, which we associate so much with the Hellenistic. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: The Hellenistic refers to the last period of Greek art, the last phase of Greek art after the death of Alexander the Great. Now Alexander, whose father had been a king in northern Greece, in Macedonia, had been able to conquer all of Greece, and ultimately, conquer an enormous territory well beyond Greece's original borders. DR. BETH HARRIS: And in so doing, he expanded the influence of Greek culture across a much wider area. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: That's right. He, in a sense, Hellenized this area, or made it Greek. His expanded territory reached from the ancient civilization of Egypt all the way to the border between Persia and India to the Indus Valley itself. It was an enormous territory. But after he died, his empire was divided among his four generals. And one of those generals saw a hill top near the coast of Turkey, which he believed was an important defensive position, and there founded the garrison of Pergamon that became, ultimately, the kingdom of Pergamon. DR. BETH HARRIS: And those are the people that built this fabulous altar and sculpted this fabulous frieze. So what's going on here is a battle between the giants and the gods and goddesses of Mount Olympus. We're witnessing a celestial battle of enormous proportions. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: This is the great mythic battle, where the giants battle the Olympian gods for supremacy of the Earth and the universe. So let's take a close look at it. Let's start with the fragment that has Athena at its center. She is graceful and beautiful, even as she battles a ferocious giant, a Titan. DR. BETH HARRIS: It's clear who's going to win. Athena looks totally in control. She's grabbed Alcyoneus by the hair, pulling him out of the Earth, disempowering him. His mother, on the other side, completely unable to help him. Although she's wild with fear over what's about to happen to her son. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: Look at the way the artist, whoever it is, has actually constructed this image. My eye starts with Athena herself, where her head would have been. My eye rides down that beautiful arm until it's grasped almost tenderly by Alcyoneus. It continues around his elbow, and then across his face, and down his chest. I notice that one of Athena's snakes is biting him on his right side. My eye then sweeps down that gorgeous curve that is his body, his torso, that leads into his leg. But it's slowed down by almost the staccato of the intersections of the deeply carved drape that belongs to Athena. And of course, that all leads us right back to Alcyoneus' mother. DR. BETH HARRIS: So it's as though Athena, this powerful, in control goddess, is bracketed on either side by these passionate, wild figures who are being defeated. And at the same time, Athena is being crowned by winged Nike, who comes from behind with a the crown for her head. So there's really a sense here of figures coming from behind, of figures coming from below, of something that's completely in flux, something that's completely in motion with an incredible sense of drama. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: It's as if the entire surface of this marble is swirling in a kind of counterclockwise motion around Athena's shield, which is at its very center. It is full of diagonals, which activates the surface. It is full of the deepest carving that creates this brilliant contrast between the highlights of the exposed bodies and the dark shadows behind them. DR. BETH HARRIS: But what's also amazing to me is the complexity of the positions of their bodies. Athena, who moves toward the left, keeps her arm to the right. And then Alcyoneus lifts his head up, twists his shoulders. His legs spill back behind him. And we're really talking about virtuoso sculpting here of the human body. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: Imagine what this would have looked like when it was painted. We think so often about Greek sculpture as being just this brilliant white marble. But we have to remember that all of this was brilliantly painted. Let's take a look at the fragment with Zeus at its center. DR. BETH HARRIS: Like Athena, he seems composed and totally in control. Even as he rushes forward, we have no doubt that he is the victor here. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: So Zeus is an enormously powerful figure. We have this beautiful exposed chest and abdomen and this wildly, almost living drapery that seems to whip around his legs. And he is taking on not one, but three giants at the same moment. DR. BETH HARRIS: But luckily, he's the king of the gods. So he's got things like eagles and thunderbolts to help him out. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: That's right. If you look at the upper right, you can see that an eagle, Zeus' emblem, is taking on the elder Titan. As the eagle is preoccupying that giant, Zeus is able to turn his attention to the giant at his feet, who is on his knees and is shortly going to be vanquished. You can see that on Zeus' other side, he has just finished putting away a giant who almost seems to be sitting on a rock. He's got stuck in his thigh what looks like a torch, but is actually the way that the Greeks represented Zeus' thunderbolts. DR. BETH HARRIS: Ouch. That has to hurt. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: It does. There's a sense of heroism, a sense of balance, even as there is a sense of the momentary and a kind of excitement that really pulls us in. The story of the gods and the giants is a story that was really important to the Greeks. It was really a set of symbols that spoke of the Greeks fear, but also optimism that they could overcome chaos. DR. BETH HARRIS: So this battle is really a metaphor for the victory of Greek culture over the unknown, over the chaotic forces of nature. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: Right. And it also represents their military victories over cultures that they didn't understand and that they feared. So let's walk up the stairs of the Great Altar into the most sacred part of the altar, where the fire, presumably to Zeus, would have been lit and where sacrifices might have been offered. You had mentioned earlier that the figures seem to almost spill out away from the wall. And I think that's most clearly seen as we walk up the stairs. There are moments when the figures that are carved in this high relief actually rest their knee on the stairs, actually, literally enter our space. For instance, one of the sea nymphs, whose legs actually end in the tail of a great serpent, coils her tail on one of the stairs. There is this wonderful way in which they literally pour out into our world. DR. BETH HARRIS: And so this whole drama is unfolding around us, moving into our space. And it must have been an amazing thing to have seen. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: One of the questions that comes to mind is why are these sculptures here in Berlin? And the answer can be found in the political ambitions of Prussia at the time. They very much wanted to be the equal of the French and the British. And that meant, in part, to have great museums that express the civilizations of the past, so they could be, in a sense, the inheritors of the great classical tradition, which was so revered in the 19th century. Berlin, in some ways, wanted to be the new Rome. DR. BETH HARRIS: And so one of the great things about being in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin is that instead of just putting what remains of the frieze on wall, they've reconstructed the altar and as much of the frieze as possible. And so we really get a sense of what this was like in the city of Pergamon, in the third century BC. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: Right. And so if this was the third century, we would be on the Acropolis, this hill top, in the city of Pergamon, about 20 miles from the coast, in what is now Turkey. We would walk up this hill. And we would find the Altar of Zeus surrounded by a great library that is reported to have had 200,000 scrolls, a garrison for soldiers, a royal palace for the king. DR. BETH HARRIS: And so this whole drama is unfolding around us, moving into our space. And it must have been an amazing thing to have seen in the second century BC. [MUSIC PLAYING]
Origin
By the time the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum on Museum Island (today the Bodemuseum) had opened in 1904, it was clear that the edifice was not large enough to host all of the art and archaeological treasures being excavated under German supervision. Excavations were underway in the areas of ancient Babylon, Uruk, Assur, Miletus, Priene and ancient Egypt, and objects from these sites could not be properly displayed within the existing German museum system. Wilhelm von Bode, director of the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, initiated plans to build a new museum nearby to accommodate ancient architecture, German post-antiquity art, and Middle Eastern and Islamic art.
Alfred Messel began a design for the large three-wing building in 1906. After his death in 1909 his friend Ludwig Hoffman took charge of the project and construction began in 1910, continuing during the First World War (1918) and the great inflation of the 1920s. The completed building was opened in 1930.
The Pergamon Museum was severely damaged during the air attacks on Berlin at the end of the Second World War. Many of the display objects had been stored in safe places, and some of the large exhibits were walled in for protection. In 1945, the Red Army collected all of the loose museum items, either as war booty or to rescue them from looting and fires then raging in Berlin. Not until 1958 were most of the objects returned to East Germany. Significant parts of the collection remain in Russia. Some are currently stored in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. The return of these items has been arranged in a treaty between Germany and Russia but, as of June 2003, is blocked by Russian restitution laws.
Exhibition
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Among the pieces the museum displays are:
- The Pergamon Altar
- The Market Gate of Miletus
- The Ishtar Gate and the Processional Way, Babylon
- The Mshatta Facade
- The Meissner fragment from the Epic of Gilgamesh
Antiquity Collection (Antikensammlung)
The collection goes back to the prince-electors of Brandenburg, who collected objects from antiquity; the collection began with an acquisition by a Roman archaeologist in 1698. It first became accessible (in part) to the public in 1830, when the Altes Museum was opened. The collection expanded greatly with excavations in Olympia, Samos, Pergamon, Miletus, Priene, Magnesia, Cyprus, and Didyma.
This collection is divided between the Pergamon Museum and the Altes Museum.
The collection contains sculpture from the archaic to Hellenistic ages as well as artwork from Greek and Roman antiquity: architecture, sculptures, inscriptions, mosaics, bronzes, jewelry and pottery.
The main exhibits are the Pergamon Altar from the 2nd century BC, with a 113-metre (371 ft) long sculptural frieze depicting the struggle of the gods and the giants, and the Gate of Miletus from Roman antiquity.
As Germany was divided following the Second World War, so was the collection. The Pergamon Museum was reopened in 1959 in East Berlin, while what remained in West Berlin was displayed in Schloss Charlottenburg.
Islamic Art Museum (Museum für Islamische Kunst)
The Islamic Department was part of the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum which opened in 1904. In the newly built Pergamon Museum, the museum moved into the upper floor of the south wing and was opened there in 1932.
The Middle East Museum (Vorderasiatisches Museum)
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The Middle East Museum exhibition displays objects found by German archeologists and others from the areas of Assyrian, Sumerian, and Babylonian culture. Additionally there are historical buildings, reliefs and lesser cultural objects and jewelry.
The main display is the Ishtar Gate and the Processional Way of Babylon along with the throne room facade of Nebuchadnezzar II.[citation needed]
The Vorderasiatisches Museum also displays the Meissner fragment from the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Plans
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The comprehensive plan for Museum Island includes an expansion of the Pergamon Museum, with connections to the Neues Museum, Bodemuseum, Alte Nationalgalerie and a new visitor centre, the James Simon Gallery.
An architectural competition in 2000 was won by Oswald Mathias Ungers from Cologne. The Pergamon Museum will be redeveloped according to his plan, which controversially proposes large alterations to buildings unchanged since 1930. The current entrance building in the Court of Honor will be replaced with a fourth wing, and an underground walk (Archäologische Promenade, archeologic walk) will connect four of the five museums.[6]
From September 2014 up to October 2023, the museum was partially closed for renovation. The hall containing Pergamon Altar will remain closed to the general public. Initially the reopening was scheduled for 2019.[7] In November 2016, it was revealed that the estimated project costs would almost double to 477 million euros. Two pump houses built in the ground during the initial construction between 1910 and 1930 had been discovered causing rising costs and delays. At least 60 million euros of the increased costs are directly due to the fact that construction costs had risen since the original estimate 10 years ago.[8] The Pergamon altar hall was not expected to reopen until at least 2025.[9]
In 2018 a temporary exhibition space just outside Museum Island and a short distance from Pergamon Museum was opened, housing a panorama of the ancient city by the Berlin-based artist Yadegar Asisi, a 3D reconstruction of the famous Pergamon altar by the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research and parts of the altar including the Telephos Frieze.[10]
As part of the Museum Island Master Plan, the Pergamon Museum underwent renovation in October 2023. It will remain closed for 14 to 20 years, with a partial reopening in 2027.[11][5]
See also
Notes
- ^ Pergamonmuseum Archived 19 July 2020 at the Wayback Machine (in German) Landesdenkmalamt Berlin
- ^ "Museumsinsel (Museum Island), Berlin". UNESCO World Heritage Centre. Retrieved 30 July 2022.
- ^ Field, Sophie (19 October 2023). "Pergamon Museum to close for 14-year-long renovation". Exberliner. Retrieved 27 October 2023.
- ^ Cunningham, Ed (27 June 2023). "One of Berlin's biggest museums is closing for 14(!) years". Time Out Worldwide. Retrieved 27 October 2023.
- ^ a b "Pergamonmuseum: Öffnet das Berliner Prestigeprojekt erst 2043 wieder?". Der Spiegel (in German). 1 December 2023. ISSN 2195-1349. Retrieved 1 December 2023.
- ^ "Pergamonmuseum". Museumsinsel. Retrieved 16 January 2023.
- ^ Forbes, Alexander (19 February 2014). "Berlin's Pergamon Museum to Close until 2019". Artnet News. Retrieved 16 January 2023.
- ^ Dege, Stefan (11 October 2016). "Pergamon Museum without its famous altar for eight years". Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 29 April 2023.
- ^ "Staatliche Museen zu Berlin: About the collections". Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Retrieved 16 January 2023.
- ^ Hickley, Catherine (9 November 2016). "Berlin to build temporary exhibition space amid Pergamon Museum delays". The Art Newspaper. Archived from the original on 12 November 2016. Retrieved 4 December 2016.
- ^ "Pergamonmuseum fast vier Jahre komplett geschlossen". WDR (in German). 27 March 2023. Retrieved 23 May 2023.
References
- Bilsel, Can (2012), Antiquity on Display: Regimes of the Authentic in Berlin's Pergamon Museum, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-1995-7055-3
External links
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- Official website (in German and English)
- Virtual tour
- Virtual tour of the Pergamon Museum provided by Google Arts & Culture