Under Construction: New Acquisitions for the Nationalgalerie’s Collection

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The museum has been able to acquire these new objects over the past few years thanks in large part to funding from the Freunde der Nationalgalerie.

Ever since the institution was founded in 1861, the collection of the Nationalgalerie has continually been expanded to include contemporary works from each passing era. The collection has been “under reconstruction” since the exhibition and research project Hello World: Revising a Collection (2018), which reflected on the political and cultural ramifications of the Nationalgalerie’s approach to collecting, and called for non-Western art movements and transcultural approaches to be incorporated into the museum’s practices and collections.

In a presentation of selected new acquisitions, which since 2005 have been made possible in great part thanks to the support of the Stiftung des Verein der Freunde der Nationalgalerie für zeitgenössische Kunst, the Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin is showing works by international artists in various media, including painting, installation, sculpture, video and works on paper. 

Through their different approaches, aesthetics, themes and reference points, these works influence how we look at both past and present, while evolving the collection and challenging and negotiating its function as the identity of the museum. Over the course of the exhibition, audiences will be able to see how these works are able to constantly produce new readings, with the museum serving as the site of a lively process of interrogation and interpretation.