Sebastian Bolesch
The Museum Barberini Celebrates 150 Years of Impressionism
This year, the Museum Barberini offers a wide range of activities celebrating the 150th anniversary of Impressionism, founded in 1874 with the first of the eight so-called “Impressionist” exhibitions in Paris. Visit this page to stay up to date on news, events, and dates surrounding the anniversary year at the Barberini!
A century and a half ago in 1874, thirty artists joined forces in Paris and showed their works from April 15 to May 15 at the studio of photographer Félix Nadar, far from the official exhibitions of the Academy. This circle of artists included Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Berthe Morisot, and Alfred Sisley—pioneers of French modernism, all of whom are represented with outstanding works in the Hasso Plattner Collection.
Michael Bahlo
Hasso Plattner Collection
Gustave Caillebotte, Boats moored on the Seine at Argenteuil, 1892
New paintings
The Museum Barberini kicked off the anniversary year with the presentation of two new acquisitions. In January 2024, Claude Monet’s The Mill at Limetz (1888) and Camille Pissarro’s The Louvre, Morning, Spring (1902), acquired by the Hasso Plattner Foundation in late 2023, joined the collection on view at the Museum Barberini, which grew to 114 works by the latest acquisition of the painting Antibes Seen from the Salis Gardens from 1888 on May 15, 2024 - exactly 150 years after the closing of the first joint exhibition of the Impressionists. Monet’s painting The Fort of Antibes (1888), also painted on the Riviera, has already been on display since 2020, as a permanent loan from the Hasso Plattner Foundation. The new acquisition now allows a direct comparison with a work that adds a view through shaded trees to the same motif. With Gustave Caillebotte's painting Boats moored on the Seine at Argenteuil (1892), the Museum Barberini welcomed its fourth new acquisition this year.
With this work, the Museum Barberini welcomes the 40th painting by Claude Monet to the Hasso Plattner Collection and the third acquisition in the year in which we celebrate the 150th anniversary of Impressionism. The Hasso Plattner Collection, exhibited in the museum on permanent loan from the Foundation, now comprises 115 masterpieces of French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. With fourty paintings by Claude Monet, it is the largest collection of Monet’s work in Europe outside of Paris, making Potsdam one of the most important centers of Impressionist landscape painting worldwide.
Ortrud Westheider, Director, Museum Barberini“We are delighted that the Foundation has acquired these outstanding examples of Impressionist painting. These purchases strengthen Potsdam’s position as a collection site where French Impressionist landscape painting can be experienced more comprehensively than almost anywhere else.”
Sebastian Bolesch
Sebastian Bolesch
Symposium, Music Walks, and more
Throughout the anniversary year, the Museum Barberini will highlight Impressionism and Post-Impressionism with a wide range of projects. On May 15 and 16, a public symposium explored the significance of international Impressionism in light of current lines of questioning and development. Camille Pissarro's work was the focus of a conference on May 22. As an outsider, the artist became the central figure of the Impressionists and the only artist to participate in all eight Impressionist exhibitions in Paris. The Barberini is dedicating a solo exhibition to Pissarro in 2025, while a selection of twenty-six prints by Pissarro from the Kupferstichkabinett of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin at the Barberini offers a foretaste of the versatile artist until January 12, 2025.
Digital projects include an innovative music application for the collection, audio stories desingned by children, a project on provenance research, a publication on the artists' locations, and an English-language version of the successful podcast Monet – Times of Change. The Barberini App and other digital content related to the collection will continue to be developed on an ongoing basis, while Impressionism will also be celebrated with tours, workshops, readings, and special visitors’ days. Until January 12, 2025, the museum is showing the exhibition Maurice de Vlaminck: Modern Artist Rebel, the first posthumous retrospective of Vlaminck’s work in a German museum.
