The Five Best Art Galleries in BerlinCategory: Travel & Holidays
Article added by: Paul Collins
Berlin is a cultured city, a city of creative, bohemian leanings. Art, in some shape or form, is absolutely everywhere, from the colorful political messages decorating the remaining stretches of the Berlin Wall, to the array of outstanding Berlin art galleries.
It goes without saying that any student on a German course in Berlin isn’t just there to learn the language. Culture plays a vital part in any period of study abroad, and nowhere can that be more easily tapped into than in the selection of Berlin art galleries below.
Old National Gallery
The Old National Gallery is perhaps the showpiece Berlin art gallery. One of five arms of the National Gallery complex, housed in a fine old building, it takes pride of place on Museum Island and is home to an impressive collection of 19th century pieces.
Although the standard throughout is consistently outstanding, most visitors tend to make a beeline for the second floor collection. Here an assortment of celebrated works from Impressionists Monet, Cezanne, Renoir, Degas and Manet, are amongst the most important in Europe.
Old Masters Gallery
Over in the Kulturforum, Potsdamer Platz, the Old Masters Gallery is the grand dame of Berlin art galleries. With works ranging from the 13th to the 18th centuries, the Gemaldegalerie is considered to have one of the foremost collections to be found anywhere in Europe.
German masters like Durer and Holbein are present and correct, as are many of the other great figures of art from down the centuries such as Brueghel, Titian, Raphael, Vermeer and Rembrandt.
New National Gallery
Just around the corner, and acting as a counterpoint to the Old National Gallery is another enormously important art gallery in Berlin: the New National Gallery. The focus here is firmly on 20th century works, with collections ranging from the early Modern to Cubism (most notably through Picasso and Gris), Surrealism (Dali and Miro) and more than just a nod to the Bauhaus movement.
Museum for the Present
But art in Berlin is not all concerned with the distant past, by any means. Few cities anywhere in the world have had such an active creative scene over the last few years. And this was paid vivid testament to in 1996, when the old Hamburger Bahnhof was turned into the Museum fur Gegenwart (or the Museum for the Present).
Tacheles
Art galleries in Berlin fall into two distinct categories: genteel, respectable and classical or ragingly avant-garde. Tacheles falls into the latter category. Owing its roots to the defiantly alternative communities of Kreuzberg and Mitte, Tacheles is a raw collection of street art and urban expression.
With its turbulent recent history, art as a form of public protest and expression has been more important to Berlin than any other city in Western Europe. And Tacheles – a ramshackle exhibition space on Oranienburger Strasse – is vibrant, thematically violent and outrageous.
It may have become a major Berlin tourist attraction in recent years, but it hasn’t lost its edge – or not much of it, anyway. What’s more for the student traveler on a German course in Berlin looking to combine gallery-hopping with a good night out, there are a couple of great bars on hand. After all, culture can be thirsty work!
Posted By: Paul Collins
Contact: e-mail
| About the Author: |
| Travel writer and former English language teacher, Paul Collins, has spent quite a bit of time in Berlin. And he’s always been a strong advocate of the fact that if classes are important for anyone on a German course in Berlin, then so too is getting to know its great art galleries, fantastic nightlife and intriguingly mixed neighborhoods. |
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