Free museum Thursdays: Old places

Despite generous subsidies by the university for cultural events, free is still better than paying half. Therefore, I have made it a goal to hit up a new museum every Thursday. These past two Thursdays, I have gone to the Museum Island, which is the Prussian empire’s vision of culture. In true romantic and idealistic fashion, it literally is a whole island of museums in the middle of Berlin.

The two that I have visited so far are the Altes Museum and the Altes Nationalgalerie.


The Altes Museum—“Old Museum”—was designed by the multi-talented, vastly influential Karl Friedrich Schinkel. It was built across from Federick the Great’s palace, which must have been a pretty tough assignment considering that’s what the King sees when he looks out his window. It can’t overpower the palace, but it has to live up to its prominent location. The big panels of glass didn’t used to be there. That’s right, it was just an open space, bridging a direct connection to the surrounding buildings and environment. Here's a view from the side:


In terms of the collection, the most notable piece is the famous bust of Queen Nefertiti. After looking at all the other excavated artifacts, the Nefertiti bust really stands out. It is incredibly well preserved, with most of its colors still in fact. Her features are also more elegant—by my Western standards—than the other ones. All in all, I thought the building itself was much more interesting than its contents. The inside is pretty neat as well:


On the other hand, I really liked the pieces I saw at the Altes Nationalgalerie, also on Museum Island. When you first walk in, you see a number of beautiful sculptures by Schadow and Rauch, two great 19th century German sculptors, including the marble version of his famous piece of princesses Friederike and Louise.


I like museums that logically guide you through its rooms much more than ones that have interconnected rooms that weave into each other and ask you to explore on your own. I’m not saying I like having my hand held, but I’m just acknowledging that whoever is setting up the exhibit probably knows more about the pieces than I do. Therefore, she has the unique opportunity to tell a story, draw some connections, or create a pleasant walk for the lesser informed.

The Altes Nationalgalerie is such a museum. In this "Old National Gallery," the first three rooms of paintings were especially thoughtfully put together. As we walked into each new room, we would be greeted with a piece that is more refined than the works in the previous room. However, after setting up our expectation of the more defined styles, the rest of the pieces in that room would feature stylistically or substantially related but much more “wild” works. In these rooms, we saw works of Monet, Manet, Cézanne, and Renoir. They weren’t masterpieces from these giants, but you can’t really complain about seeing a superstar cast of artists all in one place.

Another notable part of the museum is its large collection of Adolph Menzel paintings. We got to walk through a few decades of work that he produced, which included everything from commissioned paintings of high society to nature to his feet. It was clear that his technical ability was beyond question, but it was the lightheartedness in his paintings that he maintained until his death that struck me. Probably can’t say the same thing about the a lot of other painters. I suspect that the success he saw during his lifetime, obvious from the numerous royal paintings he produced, had a role in that quality of his work.