The front of the Alte Nationalgalerie with bronze sculpture of Frederick William IV.
Banner and detail and of the James Simon Galerie with streetsign of the Bodestraße
Detail of the central roof of the Altes Museum, showing a sculpture and stone eagles
Detail of the roof, showing the sculpture of a griffin and part of the pediment of the Alte Nationalgalerie
The colonnade and the Alte Nationalgalerie
The Humboldt Forum with the Dom in the background
Photo of a banner showing the bust of Nefertiti
Frontal view of Schinkel's neoclassical Altes Museum
Reproduction poster outside the Deutsches Historisches Museum

  • Museum Island Berlin: New Museology & Museum Criticism

  • by and with: Klaus Wehner
    guide portrait
    closing cross

    Dr. phil. Klaus Wehner:

    Echter, zugezogener, immer-noch Neu-Berliner, begeisterter Teilnehmer an Berliner Stadtrundgängen, passionierter Berlin-Liebhaber und Gründer von Kontext Berlin

    Ich bin visueller Künstler und habe viele Jahre als Kunstlehrer gearbeitet - daher ist das Führen von Stadttouren für mich eine natürliche Nachfolge. Ich liebe Kunst und auch Architektur und bin Geschichts- und Berlinbegeistert. Ich habe als Tourguide für mehrere Anbieter in Berlin weitreichende Erfahrung gesammelt. Immer wieder entdecke und erfahre ich neue Details und Geschichten über Berlin und liebe es diese auf Touren weiterzugeben.

  • 3-hour private tour
  • Group ticket €349 (up to 25 participants)
  • Museum Island day ticket not included (€24 per person)
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Discover Museum Island from a new perspective: On the “New Museology” tour, experience how museums really work – with insights into provenance, history, and the hidden structures behind the scenes.

Visit the newest location PETRI Berlin and the special exhibition “The Berlin Sculpture Discovery: ‘Degenerate Art’ in the Rubble” – a vivid example of how museums communicate memory, politics, and art.

Details:

The museum as an institution has long been seen as a neutral mediator of knowledge, history, and scientific facts. This view is now changing – driven by new perspectives on colonialism, provenance, and power relations. New Museology reveals these hidden structures and questions the museum as a place of representation, historiography, and cultural self-positioning. This tour focuses precisely on these issues.

The main focus is Berlin’s Museum Island and its history – complemented by other nearby locations that are central to understanding the institution of the museum.

The tour begins with a visit to the newest museum location: PETRI Berlin, dedicated to early Berlin archaeology. We also visit the special exhibition “The Berlin Sculpture Discovery: ‘Degenerate Art’ in the Rubble”, which explores key museological questions on several levels – including memory and forgetting, the politicization of art, state propaganda and censorship, and how destruction, loss, and reconstruction are handled in the museum context.

Afterwards, we explore the courtyards of the reconstructed City Palace – today the Humboldt Forum – and view the Zeughaus on Unter den Linden, today home of the German Historical Museum. Its complex history reflects different political systems and museum concepts.

We continue via the Lustgarten to Schinkel’s Altes Museum, Prussia’s first museum building, then to the Neues Museum, the Alte Nationalgalerie, the Pergamonmuseum, and the Bode Museum.

The history of Museum Island is always linked to key developments in German history. This tour opens new perspectives on museums and sustainably changes the way their societal role is perceived.

Options:

This tour is thematically specialized and available by request only. Booking is via email, allowing individual wishes, focuses, and requirements to be coordinated directly.

About Klaus:

Klaus Wehner is an artist and has worked with photography for many years. Museums form a central focus of his artistic and academic work. He has realized numerous projects with and about European museums and earned a PhD on museum and representation. An excerpt from his dissertation appeared in the volume “The Thing About Museums” (Routledge).
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Further Museum Island Tours:
Public
2h-Tour Public Museum Island Tour: Overview and Berlin History 2h-Tour Private Museum Island Tour (2 Hours): Overview & History 3h-Tour Museum Island Tour with guided visit to the New Museum 4h-Tour Museum Island Tour (4 hours): Bode Museum, Neues Museum & Pergamon Panorama
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