Annual Report 2010 - Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden

View into one of the Gerhard richter
rooms, …
… the display storeroom: from the
Baroque to the present day, …
20 A pHoen IX FRoM tH e WAteRS – tH e
open I nG oF tH e n eW AlBeRtI n uM
Above the sandstone­clad late 19th­century Neorenaissance
building hovers a state­of­the­art architectural
masterpiece – a steel structure weighing around 2700
tonnes. With this combination of the historic and the ultramodern,
the new Albertinum has been open to the
21st­century public since 19 June, 2010. The building located
on the Brühlsche Terrasse also constitutes a bridge
between yesterday and tomorrow in another sense. The
converted and completely refurbished building accommodates
two of Dresden’s most important art museums
– the Skulpturensammlung and the Galerie Neue Meister
– thus providing an insight into the development of the
fine arts over the past 200 years. What is special about
this insight is its perspective, for the tours through both
the Galerie Neue Meister and the Skulpturensammlung
begin with a pioneer of modern art. In the sculpture collection
it is Auguste Rodin, who rebelled against the prevailing
idealistic aesthetics of academic art, seeking new
forms of representation.
Like Rodin in the sphere of sculpture, Caspar David Friedrich
also marked the emergence into a new era in painting.
His romantic landscapes are expressions of a new
subjectivity, signifying a new strength on the part of the
individual, which was to influence numerous subsequent
generations of artists.
… and the Klingersaal with art from
the fin de siècle period
Starting point: disaster
It was thanks to a disaster that the Albertinum received
the chance to completely revamp both its contents and its
architectural legacy: the devastating flood of the River
Elbe in 2002. At that time, water entered the underground
storerooms of the Albertinum and the Zwinger, making it
necessary to evacuate all the works of art stored there.
Although the Albertinum reopened its doors to visitors
just a few days after the flood, it was clearly evident that
extensive restoration work was urgently required – the
objects stored there were clearly under threat and the
vaulted basement had suffered damage.
Yet this dramatic situation became the starting point of a
unique campaign: 45 contemporary artists – including
Gerhard Richter, Eberhard Havekost, Georg Baselitz and
Gotthard Graubner – donated their own works for an
auction which was held upon the initiative of Helge
Achenbach in the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin in autumn
2002. The proceeds, which amounted to € 3.4 million,
laid the financial basis for the restoration work. At
the same time, this unforgettable expression of solidarity
also provided moral encouragement and, hence, the
strength to implement a new and unusual concept. As a
result, the firm of the architect Volker Staab was commissioned
with the restoration of the building and the conduct
of redevelopment work in 2005 – a decision which
was not difficult in view of the irresistible ingenuity of the
design.