Petition Madness in the Art World…and a Search for Solutions: Florens 2012, by Michael Miller

Leonardo da Vinci, The Battle of Anghiari (Tavola Doria)

The past year has been a turbulent one in the world of old masters, at least in certain pools of it. In some quarters, it has been a year of angry petitions. This article concerns Italy, but I shall begin in Germany, since the most active center of trouble at the moment is Berlin, where the administration of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz plans to move the great collection of old master paintings from the Gemäldegalerie at the suburban Kulturforum in order to accomodate Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch’s collection of surrealist and modern art, which they have offered as a gift. A selection of the old masters will go to the Bode Museum on the Museuminsel, where they were originally intended to be from the beginning, but this facility is too small to house the entire collection. The remainder will go into storage until suitable gallery space can be found or built. This has not yet been planned, and funds have not been allocated. Several similar projects, planned after the Reunification, have become stalled over the years, and leaders in the field like Professor Jeffrey Hamburger of Harvard are concerned. 

Read the full article on the Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts!