Going and Coming

In 1991, the Archaeological Museums decided to come together on the Museumsinsel. With this move, the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin was supposed to have fully left the once popular Charlottenburg precinct. However, the question of what to do with the two “Stülerbauten” soon arose. The Director-General at the time, Wolf-Dieter Dube, was able to convince the collector Karl-Heinz Berggruen to exhibit his collection in one of the buildings. For the identical building opposite, in 2008, the Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg provided a fitting companion showcase. With their collections of Modernist art, both institutions function as “satellites” of the Neue Nationalgalerie at the Kulturforum, which presents 20th-century art. They are also a product of the dynamics of the internal reunification of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, a process which remains ongoing today.