The presence of the past

David Chipperfield's restoration of Berlin's Neues Museum was completed last week. Berliners and Berlin visitors were given the weekend to roam the empty building, which from now until autumn will be progressively filled with the city's collection of antiquities. This collection has not been seen inside the Neues Museum since before the Second World War, and the building itself lay in progressive ruination during the postwar era. Berlin's Museuminsel, once totally complete, will be the envy of the world. But the story of its redevelopment is as powerfully historical as the narrative provided by its vast collections. And it is perhaps not surprising that this blog should draw attention to the Sebaldian resonances of Chipperfield's massive project: in other words, to what Austerlitz himself would have thought upon roaming a vast and empty institution such as the Neues Museum, bereft of its exhibits, but certainly not lacking in the presence of the past.

Bernhard Schulz in his commentary here walks us through the beautiful and elegant 'restoration'. In particular I liked the following:

Throughout the building there should should be no doubt as to which elements are true to the original, which ones have been restored, which ones have been supplemented or copied, and which ones are completely new. Many demands are placed on the eye of the beholder but historicity of the architecture becomes legible. This corresponds perfectly to the spirit in which the New Museum was created – because it was designed to bear witness to the state of archaeology, a field just taking shape at the time and inseparable from the idea of transience.