René Micallef

Impressive building by Mies van der Rohe, recently restored. The Isa Genzken exhibition was well done, and a free booklet and map were provided which helped me appreciate the philosophy and techniques involved in the artist's work, which has evolved over many decades. I enjoyed the elliptical and hyperbolic art from the 1960s, and the Covid-19 Nefertiti, but was less impressed by the hanging chairs with stickers and cellophane wraps.

The rooms which normally exhibit a sample of the museum's impressive in-house collection ("Sammlung") - following a rotation system for the lesser known works and artists - was closed for refurbishment/rearrangement when I visited in late October 2023, during the same week when the Pergamon Museum closed. Indications that "the collection is closed" on the website were hard to fathom without further explanation of what is meant by "the collection".

I was a bit disappointed that a big section of the museum was closed given that some of the other important state museums in Berlin were closed or partly closed for refurbishment at the same time (not to mention the Pergamon which had been fully booked for weeks until its decades-long closure). I thought the end of October could be a good time to visit museums in Berlin but the curators seem to think differently. Given that these museums belong to the same agency, they could have coordinated a staggered plan for the closures.

I was also a bit annoyed that, though I had booked a timeslot well in advance, I needed to wait in line to enter with the people who had just acquired their tickets on the spot. Maybe this was due to the fact that I visited on a Thursday evening with extended hours when a German car company was sponsoring free tickets. But what's the point in asking people to get a separate (free) timeslot ticket (besides the regular museum entry ticket) using a complicated online box office procedure, if you don't sort out the visitors at the exhibition entrance?

Very well done - gives you a sense of a 3d immersion into ancient Pergamon with buildings in colour and in the most perfect and glorious state, full of people feasting on the visit of a Roman emperor. Day and light cycle with background music nicely done.

The only observation I would like to make: there are separate staircases leading up and down from the viewing platform but I only realised this when I had reached the top, given the verbose "round trip" signs in German which foreigners find hard to decipher. Why not use a simple and international "no entry ⛔" sign on each landing at the wrong way staircase entry?

Excellent collection of items in a spectacular building. Superb crystal and mineral collection. Great taxidermy. Museology is still a bit old-style. The old wooden vitrines with old unpolished reflective glass are "vintage" but create a distance which feels strange in a 21st century museum. There are new materials and techniques available to protect the exhibits today which are not so intrusive. The practice of closing rooms at the end of loops and forcing visitors to retrace their steps through a huge area is not ideal. Eco-friendly toilets are great but need not smell so bad...