200 Years of Berlin's Museum Island: Nothing Happens Without Sponsors
The 200th anniversary of the Museum Island will be celebrated with a five-year festival program starting in summer 2025. The program was presented at a press conference in the Altes Museum on Tuesday. The patron of the anniversary is Governing Mayor Kai Wegner . During the marketing event attended by prominent guests, he expressed the wish that every Berlin school class would visit the "island" once in the next five years.
Hermann Parzinger, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation , recalls the laying of the foundation stone of the Old Museum on July 9, 1825 in Berlin's Lustgarten. In a politically and economically difficult time - "Berlin had problems at the time," said Parzinger - Berlin nevertheless commissioned the most important architect of his time, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, and thus invested in the future of the city with foresight. Parzinger is alluding to the cuts in the art and culture sector, which are also hitting Berlin's museums hard. His words are addressed to Kai Wegner. "Investing in art and culture is important and is still relevant today," said Parzinger. The Old Museum was the first public museum in Prussia.
The "island" anniversary will start at the end of May with an opening weekend around World Heritage Day on June 1st. There will be an open-air festival and a colonnade bar on 50 evenings. A television documentary about the Museum Island will premiere in the James Simon Gallery. The two-part ZDF/arte documentary tells the story of the Museum Island using nine top works.
No free museum Sunday, sponsors should step inFree events were not promised, and the museum will no longer have free Sundays. The Bode Museum will continue to be closed two days a week, Monday and Tuesday. The austerity measures in the cultural sector have hit the state museums hard. The Governing Mayor Kai Wegner and the spokesperson for the Museum Island Matthias Wemhoff are looking for additional sponsors who could step in financially.
Some sponsors, such as the Lotto Foundation, Bertelsmann and the long-distance travel company FlixBus, are already supporting the anniversary program. A representative of Flix said: "In times of tight budgets for the cultural sector, we want to make a difference." Mobility and culture go hand in hand for the long-distance bus company.
Matthias Wemhoff reveals that a different museum will be the focus each year. "We'll start with the Altes Museum in 2025." Despite the austerity measures in the education sector that Berlin has just passed, Kai Wegner hopes "that every Berlin school class should visit the island once in the next five years." Wegner does not explain how the teachers should implement this.
In 2026, the Alte Nationalgalerie will be the centre of the celebrations, in 2027 the then reopened Pergamon Museum , in 2028 the Neues Museum, in 2029 the Bode Museum “and in 2030 everyone will celebrate together”, says Wemhoff.
There will be 50 evenings of partying and dancing in the colonnades behind the Old Museum. Marketing strategists at the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation would like to see “more events on the island”. Bands and choirs are to perform, but nothing more specific is being said.
Berliner-zeitung
