The Art of Mediation

With Paul Cassirer (1871–1926), the Alte Nationalgalerie will honor one of the most important art dealers of his time in an exhibition opening on May 22, 2026. The occasion is both the 100th anniversary of Cassirer’s death and the museum’s 150th anniversary, whose collection is closely linked to his work in many respects. Artists such as Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, and Vincent van Gogh gained broader recognition in the German-speaking world through him for the first time. By presenting their works, Cassirer left a lasting mark on the German cultural landscape and sparked passionately conducted public debates. Numerous key works entered major German collections and museums through his mediation, including the holdings of the Nationalgalerie.

The lecture focuses on selected aspects of the diverse history of Cassirer’s impact and on his unusually dense and continuous exhibition activity in Berlin, through which he significantly shaped the dissemination of French Impressionism and French modernism in Germany.

Dr. Anette Hüsch has been Director of the Alte Nationalgalerie since March 2025. She studied art history and media theory, philosophy and aesthetics, and visual communication at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design. After completing her doctorate, she worked as a research museum assistant at Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, the Neue Nationalgalerie, and in the General Directorate of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, and from 2006 as a curator for the Nationalgalerie institutions, the Federal Republic of Germany’s collection of contemporary art, and the art collection of the European Patent Organisation based in Munich, Berlin, Brussels, The Hague, and Paris.

Since 2010 she served as Director of the Kunsthalle zu Kiel. Under her leadership, the institution—sometimes in cooperation with other museums—presented exhibitions on modern and contemporary art, including Emil Nolde and the Brücke, Falling Stars: From Boccioni to Schiele. The First World War as the End of European Artistic Paths, The Magic of Reality: The Painter Albert Aereboe, as well as Third Wave: The Spur Group, Pop, and Politics, Amazons of Pop! Women Artists, Superheroines, Icons 1961–1973, and exhibitions featuring artists such as Anita Albus, Miriam Cahn, and Alicja Kwade.