Museum Barberini Opens in Potsdam with Hasso Plattner's Collection

The Museum Barberini, a private museum founded by German software billionaire Hasso Plattner, will open in Potsdam near Berlin on January 23, 2017. The museum is housed in a reconstructed Baroque palace originally built by Frederick the Great, destroyed in World War II, and now restored with a historic facade and modern interiors offering about 4,000 square meters of exhibition space. Plattner has spent 20 years building a collection focused on art from the former East Germany and works created after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, alongside masterpieces by Impressionists Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, as well as Max Liebermann, Edvard Munch, Joan Mitchell, and Gerhard Richter. Plattner recently partnered with billionaire art dealer Guy Wildenstein to launch the Wildenstein Plattner Institute, dedicated to advancing art historical studies through accessibility, cataloging, and digitization of primary sources, with an initial project being a comprehensive catalogue raisonné of Jasper Johns. The museum's name references the Roman Palazzo Barberini, which is also undergoing a new direction under Flaminia Gennari Santori.