Winter at the Neue Nationalgalerie

The museum opened in 1968, the only building Mies completed in Germany after he emigrated to America. It reopened in 2021 after a careful renovation by David Chipperfield Architects, who changed as little as they could. The glass hall at street level is given over to large temporary shows; the collection galleries are below.

Maurizio Cattelan: NIGHT

Cattelan won the Preis der Nationalgalerie in 2026, and NIGHT, until 7 March 2027, is his first major solo exhibition in Germany. It brings together some of his best-known works, among them Novecento, a horse hanging from the ceiling; La Rivoluzione siamo noi, the artist in a Joseph Beuys felt suit hanging from a coat rack; and Him, the small kneeling figure that has unsettled audiences since 2001. A new work, Purgatory, places a scaled-down Brandenburg Gate inside the museum. Cattelan knows the city: twenty years ago he co-curated the Berlin Biennale.

Ruin and Rush: Berlin 1910–1930

Downstairs, until 3 January 2027, around 45 works from the collection capture Berlin in the 1910s and 1920s, through the First World War and the Weimar Republic, with glamour and misery side by side. Highlights include Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Potsdamer Platz, from 1914, a Dada collage by Hannah Höch from 1919, and Otto Dix’s portrait of the dancer Anita Berber, on loan from the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart.

Extreme Tension

The collection display Extreme Tension, until 4 April 2027, follows art between politics and society from 1945 to 2000, with works from both East and West. Its centrepiece is Barnett Newman’s Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue IV.

Plan your visit

A museum ticket for €20 covers all the exhibitions; there are also tickets for single shows. The museum is closed on Mondays. Before you leave, walk out onto the terrace, where Alexander Calder’s black steel Têtes et Queue stands against the view of St Matthew’s Church.