James-Simon-Galerie: The Man Who Gave Away Nefertiti
Why is it significant?
Climb the broad flight of pale stone steps and stand under the thin white columns of the newest building on Museum Island. It looks calm and almost ancient, yet it only opened in 2019. This is the James-Simon-Galerie, designed by David Chipperfield as the new gateway to the island's museums.
Key Facts
| Place | James-Simon-Galerie: The Man Who Gave Away Nefertiti |
|---|---|
| Address | Bodestraße 1-3, 10178 Berlin, Germany |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.51990, 13.39700 |
| Part of Walk | Kings, Domes and Empty Shelves: Museum Island & Prussian Berlin |
| Generated | Generated |
Climb the broad flight of pale stone steps and stand under the thin white columns of the newest building on Museum Island. It looks calm and almost ancient, yet it only opened in 2019. This is the James-Simon-Galerie, designed by David Chipperfield as the new gateway to the island's museums.
Who was James Simon? He was a Jewish cotton merchant, one of the richest men in Berlin around 1900, and one of the most generous. He was close to Kaiser Wilhelm the Second, but he spent his fortune on others: on hospitals, on schools, on charities for poor children... and on art for the city. He gave the royal museums whole collections of Renaissance paintings and sculpture.
And then there was Egypt. Simon paid for the German excavations at Amarna, and in December 1912 the archaeologists found a painted limestone bust of a queen with a long neck and one missing eye: Nefertiti. Under the rules of the dig, the finds belonged to Simon. In 1920 he gave them, Nefertiti included, to the museums of Berlin. She has been the city's most famous resident ever since, and she lives just next door in the Neues Museum.
James Simon died in 1932, a few months before Hitler came to power. Under the Nazis his name was quietly pushed aside, as if the treasures had come from nowhere. Naming this building after him, almost ninety years later, was a deliberate act of remembering. Behind you stands the Pergamonmuseum, built between 1910 and 1930 to hold whole buildings from the ancient world: the Pergamon Altar and the blue-glazed Ishtar Gate of Babylon. It is closed for a renovation that will last years, so for now its giants wait in the dark.
When you walk through the galleries here, remember that a queen of Egypt reached Berlin thanks to a private citizen who gave everything away, and whom his own city then tried to forget. Now pass along the colonnade into the garden courtyard behind, where a temple on a high podium waits.