Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
22 October 2026 – 28 February 2027
To mark the 150th anniversary of the Alte Nationalgalerie, the special presentation “Across Epochs” brings together works from the “long 19th century” and the late 20th century. In ten rooms spread across all three floors of the building, works by artists such as Andreas Gursky, Sarah Lucas, Joan Miró, and Andy Warhol encounter art from the 19th century. Unconventional juxtapositions offer new perspectives on familiar works and explore the question of what art is and can be.
When the Nationalgalerie opened on Museumsinsel Berlin in 1876, it was a venue for contemporary art. Today, the Alte Nationalgalerie serves as the main building of the Nationalgalerie and is dedicated to the art of the long 19th century. All six buildings of the Nationalgalerie are linked by a jointly managed collection that spans from the late 18th century to the present day. “Across Epochs” brings this continuum to light through selected works within the historical collection presentation and invites visitors to engage in comparative, associative viewing.
Dialogues Across Epochs and Genres
Still lifes, self-portraits, and portraits; abstraction and figuration; painting, photography, and sculpture come together in surprising constellations. Gotthard Graubner’s (1930–2013) intense, color-saturated forms encounter new forms of perception found in Impressionism and PostImpressionism. The juxtaposition of Andy Warhol’s (1928–1987) “Diamond Dust Shoes” with a still life by Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) demonstrates how, over the course of more than a century, the genre has become a testing ground for the interplay of form, color, and surface.
Concepts of self and societal role models are also reflected across different eras: The self-portrait by painter Sabine Lepsius (1864–1942), who had to hold her own in a male-dominated art world, is juxtaposed with a photographic self-portrait by British contemporary artist Sarah Lucas (*1962). In a casual, masculine-sounding pose, Lucas looks defiantly past the camera while smoking.
Another dialogue connects Adolph Menzel’s epoch-making “Iron Rolling Mill (Modern Cyclops)” (1872–1875) with Andreas Gursky’s (*1955) “Singapore Bourse II” (1997). Here, realist painting meets a condensed artistic depiction of the reality of the stock market. In very different ways, both works examine the world of work, economic processes, and the possibilities for their artistic representation.
The exhibition is spread across all three floors of the Alte Nationalgalerie in specific areas. An accompanying audio guide explores the connections that span different eras in greater depth: artists, directors, collectors, and conservators present selected dialogues between works.
