An Art Day in Berlin

An Art Day in Berlin – 8 hrs

Highlights: See the Boros Collection and Museum Berggruen
Duration: 8 hrs

The German capital knows how to look backward and forward at once, how to roll up its sleeves and how to kick up its heels, how to remember and how to renew. Berlin is fast changing, lively and fun. It is perceived both nationally and internationally as a pulsating creative metropolis in which exciting ideas are developed and new trends are set. The city is an important center of the European art scene. One can not only find the established museums and galleries but also private collectors who open their exhibition spaces with contemporary art to the public. Classical art patronage with important collections of modern art is displayed in several entities of the National Gallery.

Itinerary Suggestion for your Art Day in Berlin

09.30 h:  Meet with your private guide and your driver in the lobby of your hotel

Transfer by sedan and stop at the East Side Gallery a 1.3 km long painted stretch of the former Berlin Wall along the Mühlenstrasse in former East Berlin. It is the largest open-air gallery in the world with over one hundred original mural paintings.
11.00 h:  Arrival at Boros Collection in Berlin. Guided tour in English through the  private contemporary art collection.

Different facets of the collection have been on public display since  2008 in a converted bunker, situated in Berlin-Mitte, with 3.000 sqm of exhibition space spread over 80 rooms. It contains groups of works by international artists dating from 1990 to the present. For example a six meter high, newly constructed tree by the chinese artist Ai Weiwei, composed of old, found objects.

12.30 h:  Walking tour through Spandauer Vorstadt with the courtyard complex Hackesche Höfe. It is a rare example of art nouveau architecture in Berlin Mitte district. Since the 1990s this area has been synonymous with the vibrant urban renewal of the New Berlin, combining a mix of business, boutiques, bars and restaurants, residential housing, entertainment venues and more than 30 art galleries distributed around the courtyards of the Scheunenviertel (barn district) area.
The first Jewish synagogue was built here and the first Jewish cemetery established on the Große  Hamburger Straße. The largest synagogue in Germany was built in nearby Oranienburger Straße in  1866.

14.00 h:  Light Lunch at one of the restaurants at Hackesche Höfe

15.00 h:  You will head off to Museum Berggruen where you will visit the permanent exhibition:
The Nationalgalerie first presented the Berggruen Collection to the public in 1996, housed in the opposite Schloss Charlottenburg. With its impressive collection of more than 120 works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Paul Klee, and Alberto Giacometti the Museum Berggruen is one of the most important museums of modern art in Berlin.
The Museum Berggruen owes its name and genesis to the art dealer and collector Heinz Berggruen (1914 – 2007). Born in Berlin he left Nazi Germany in 1936 and emigrated to the USA. Initially he worked as a freelance arts journalist, before taking up a post in 1939 at the San Francisco Museum of Art.

17.00 h:  Transfer back to your hotel