For almost 60 years it was a huge ruin, having been badly damaged in the Second World War. Now the New Museum on Berlin’s Museum Island radiates its old splendour once again. After almost ten years of planning and restoration work, the reconstruction of the museum is complete. On Thursday (5 March), British architect David Chipperfield symbolically presented Hermann Parzinger, President of the Foundation of Prussian Cultural Heritage, with the keys to the building.
The almost 150-year-old building has a floor area of more than 20,000 square metres and in future will house the Egyptian Museum and the Papyrus Collection as well as the Museum of Prehistory and Early History. It will be officially open again for visitors in October of this year, and the exhibition will include the famous bust of the Egyptian Queen Nefertiti.
Chipperfield’s work on the New Museum was initially viewed with scepticism, but ultimately earned him great praise. He has to a large extent preserved the building’s basic historical fabric and designed each room individually. A prime example of Chipperfield’s approach, in which past and present converge, is the museum’s entrance hall: visitors are welcomed by a modern concrete staircase between old masonry (photo).
The reconstruction of the New Museum, which involved 150 restorers, cost about 200 million Euro – 30 million less than originally planned. It is the third building on the Museum Island to be restored, after the Old National Gallery in 2001 and the Bode Museum in 2006. Museum visitors are sure to be pleased: for the first time in 70 years they will again, as of October, be able to view important art and cultural treasures in all five buildings on the Museum Island.
