New Gallery (Kassel)
Art museum in Kassel, Germany
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Neue Galerie (New Gallery) is an art museum in Kassel, Hesse, Germany. It is part of Hessen Kassel Heritage and is located at Schöne Aussicht, overlooking the Karlsaue. The museum presents paintings, sculpture and contemporary art from around 1800 to the present, with holdings drawn from the municipal and state art collections of Kassel.[1][2]
The building was constructed between 1871 and 1877 as a picture gallery for the Kassel collection of Old Masters. After severe damage during the Second World War, the Old Masters collection was moved to Schloss Wilhelmshöhe. The museum reopened in 1976 under its present name with a new focus on art of the 19th and 20th centuries, later expanded to include contemporary art and works connected with documenta.[3]
History
Earlier gallery and 19th-century building
A previous gallery building was erected between 1749 and 1752 by François de Cuvilliés for William VIII, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel. During the French occupation under Jérôme Bonaparte, it was converted into a city residence.
In the 19th century, a new gallery building was commissioned for the Kassel painting collection. It was designed by Heinrich von Dehn-Rotfelser, an architect and professor at the Academy in Kassel, and opened in 1877. The building was conceived as a museum for the Old Masters and housed important works from the Kassel collections, including Dutch paintings by artists such as Rembrandt, Paul Potter and Philips Wouwerman.
War damage and post-war reorganisation
During the bombing of Kassel in the Second World War, the gallery building was badly damaged and burned out during the air raid of 22/23 October 1943. The raid was carried out by the Royal Air Force and caused a firestorm that destroyed much of Kassel's old town.[4]
The most important works had been evacuated before the destruction; a group of major paintings was taken to Vienna and returned to Kassel in 1956. After the war, the Old Masters collection was no longer housed permanently in the gallery building and was eventually transferred to Schloss Wilhelmshöhe.[3]
The damaged gallery building was gradually repaired and reused. It also became connected with the history of documenta, as the exhibition series used the building repeatedly as an exhibition venue.
Reopening as Neue Galerie
The museum reopened on 4 September 1976 as the Neue Galerie. Its new concept brought together municipal and state collections of more recent art, including paintings from the 18th and 19th centuries, major works of German Impressionism, Classical Modernism, sculpture from the 18th to the 20th century, and contemporary art.[3]
One of the central features of the reopened museum was a room installed by Joseph Beuys himself. The Beuys room remains one of the best-known parts of the museum and includes the installation The Pack.[1][2]
Since the 1980s, the collection has continued to expand, especially through contemporary acquisitions and works connected with documenta.[3]
Renovation and reopening in 2011
The Neue Galerie was closed for renovation in 2006. During this period, the empty building was used as one of the venues of documenta 12 in 2007. After extensive renovation and modernisation, the museum reopened in November 2011. The renovation created a brighter and more open exhibition building with increased exhibition space.[3]
Collection and exhibitions
The Neue Galerie presents works from the 19th century to the present, including Romantic, Impressionist, Expressionist, modern and contemporary art. Artists represented in the collection include Carl Schuch, Lovis Corinth, Max Slevogt and Joseph Beuys.[1]
The museum has a strong connection to documenta, the international exhibition of contemporary art founded in Kassel in 1955. Since 2019, the permanent presentation about: documenta has occupied the upper floor of the Neue Galerie. It presents acquisitions from past documenta exhibitions, archival material, photographs, videos and selected works, and traces the development of documenta from a local post-war exhibition into an international platform for contemporary art.[5]
Recent exhibitions and collection-based projects
In recent years, the Neue Galerie has combined its permanent collection with temporary exhibitions, studio presentations and research-based displays. In 2023 and 2024, the film installation Sebastián Díaz Morales: Smashing Monuments was shown as part of about: documenta. The work reflected on ideas associated with documenta fifteen and the Indonesian collective ruangrupa, including the concept of lumbung, or communal sharing of resources.[6]
In 2024, the museum presented research on Caspar David Friedrich's double-sided moonlight transparency, a rare work in Friedrich's oeuvre designed to be viewed in darkness with backlighting. The project investigated the work in relation to the history of transparent painting and historical illumination techniques, in cooperation with a historian of physics and the conservation programme at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden.[7]
From October 2024 to January 2025, the Neue Galerie hosted InformELLE Künstlerinnen der 1950er/60er-Jahre, a special exhibition devoted to women artists associated with Informalism. The exhibition presented 86 works by 14 painters and two sculptors, including Mary Bauermeister, Natalia Dumitresco, Maria Lassnig, Judit Reigl, Soshana and Maria Helena Vieira da Silva. It was curated by Ulrich Etscheit, Dorothee Gerkens and Roland Knieg and organised in cooperation with the Kunsthalle Schweinfurt, the Emil Schumacher Museum in Hagen and the Forschungsstelle Informelle Kunst at the University of Bonn.[8]
In 2026, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Neue Galerie's reopening under its present name, Hessen Kassel Heritage presented Resonanzräume. documenta Kunst und weitere Neuerwerbungen. The exhibition focused on major acquisitions from recent years, especially large-scale installations, films and objects, and examined the collection's development through themes of history, memory and contemporary artistic practice.[9]
Other recent collection-based work has included studio and research presentations by members of the museum staff. In 2022, a studio exhibition presented works by the Moroccan-American painter Frederic Matys Thursz from the Neue Galerie collection following a donation.[10] Kero Fichter also contributed to cross-collection research and public programming at Hessen Kassel Heritage, including contributions to the 2023 publication Alte Meister que(e)r gelesen.[11][12]
