BERLIN, GERMANY.-MoMA in Berlin presents at the Neue Nationalgalerie more than 200 works that together provide a lucid overview of modern art since 1880, as represented by MoMA’s unparalleled collection of painting and sculpture through this September 19, 2004. The closure of the permanent collection galleries during construction of the Museum’s new building has enabled the inclusion of a number of works that seldom travel but are nonetheless internationally known as canonical milestones in the development of modern art. Major examples include Claude Monet’s Water Lilies, Henri Matisse’s The Dance, Pablo Picasso’s Girl Before a Mirror, Jackson Pollock’s Number 1, 1948, and Andy Warhol’s Before and After. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue containing an anthology of texts drawn from the Museum’s archives and publications dating from 1929 to 2002.

The Nationalgalerie (National Gallery), designed by August Stüler, was opened on Berlin’s Museum Island in 1876. Its collection rapidly expanded through acquisitions and donations. Originally comprising works by Blechen, Schinkel and Menzel, the collection was extended, much to the Emperor’s indignation, to include works by Manet, Monet, Renoir and Cézanne.

In 1919, the then director of the Nationalgalerie, Ludwig Justi, opened a gallery to accommodate work by contemporary artists in the Kronprinzenpalais. The upstairs rooms were reserved as a rule for the works of individual artists or artist collectives. Justi consistently endeavored to introduce the oeuvre of particular artists by exhibiting a range of works drawn from the various creative periods of their artistic careers. Heckel, Nolde and Beckmann were thus each afforded a separate room, and another room was dedicated to the work of Schmidt-Rottluff and Kirchner. These were complemented by works by Kandinsky, Campendonk and Klee, to mention but a few. With its "Experimental Gallery", the Nationalgalerie possessed what was, in those days, the best and most comprehensive collection of modern German art, serving as both influence and example to other museums.

Following the National Socialists’ rise to power, Justi’s subsequent dismissal from office and the seizure of 500 artworks on grounds of purported "degeneracy", the Nationalgalerie’s development was abruptly halted. In 1939, all remaining works were evacuated from the museum in order to protect them from the Allied bombing. Since the end of the war there have been assiduous efforts to compensate for the gaps in the collection caused by the Nazi régime and the effects of war. An important contribution to these efforts was made by the Gallery of the Twentieth Century which was established by the Council of Greater Berlin in 1945.

Following the foundation of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation) in 1957, the part of the collection that had remained in the West was exhibited again for the first time in 1959 at the Grand Orangerie of Schloß Charlottenburg. In order to exhibit the ever-expanding collection, it became necessary to construct a new building in the western part of the city.

The Neue Nationalgalerie, constructed according to plans designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, was the first museum to be opened at the Kulturforum in 1968. It united the remaining holdings of the Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery) collection held in the West with the collection of the Gallery of the Twentieth Century. Upon the reunification of Germany in 1989, the reunited collection of the Nationalgalerie once again necessitated an overall reorganization.

Nineteenth-century art, including a series of Impressionist works, was moved to the Alte Nationalgalerie on the Museum Island and to the Galerie der Romantik. Nineteenth-century sculpture was transferred in part to the Friedrichwerdersche Church in Berlin-Mitte. And in 1996, art dating from the 1960s through to the present day found its new domicile at the recently opened Hamburger Bahnhof.

The Neue Nationalgalerie - the "light temple of glass" - houses European painting and sculpture from classical Modernism to the 1960s, including works by artists such as Picasso, Munch, Feininger, Dix and Kokoschka. The collection of German Expressionists, comprising works by Kirchner, Heckel, and Nolde among others, is regarded as one of the most significant of its kind in Germany. Another central piece of the collection is a group of eleven paintings by Max Beckmann, produced between 1906 and 1942, which present an overview of his artistic trajectory. Surrealist painting is represented by artists such as Ernst, Dalí and Miró. Otto Dix and George Grosz document the Verism and New Objectivity movements with their paintings. The collection culminates with American painting of the sixties and seventies, with the abstract color field painting of Barnett Newman, Frank Stella and Ellsworth Kelly.