BERLIN, June 19 — The Museum Berggruen in Berlin — the Charlottenburg branch of the Nationalgalerie — will be reopening an extension today, after having been under construction for structural reasons.

The Stülerbau, the museum’s main building, remained open to the public during the renovations.

With the new wing now accessible, visitors can once again enjoy some 70 works by Swiss-German artist Paul Klee, including the bright graphics of Blauer Berg (1919), the playful forms of Schwarzmagier (1920), and the spare silhouette of Versiegelte Dame (1930).

Paul Cézanne, Bildnis des Gartners Vallier (Portrait de Vallier),1906 watercolour over pencil on paper, 84 x 31.5cm. © bpk / Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie, Museum Berggruen / Jens Ziehe

In addition, Berlin composer and artist Brigitte Witzenhause (b. 1979) has developed a new pluridisciplinary sound  and video installation for the wing’s relaunch, entitled Studio Cézanne: An Electro-Acoustic Sound Installation in Four Parts (on view from today to October 16, 2016). The work is intended as sonorous homage to Paul Cézanne, and also offers a contemporary perspective on the Cubism expressed in paintings by Picasso, Braque, and Klee.

The installation will evolve, with the artist presenting audio variations every month. Witzenhaus’s soundscapes incorporate musique concrète, electro music, acoustic music, and site-specific field recordings captured from Cézanne’s studio and around Aix-en-Provence, the city in the south of France that Cézanne often painted in and around.

To mark the occasion, the opening day at Museum Berggruen will grant free entry.

The Museum Berggruen was founded by art dealer and collector Heinz Berggruen (1914-2007). The institution possesses one of the most important modern art collections in Germany, with an impressive array of works by Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee — the collection’s two largest groups of respective works — as well as pieces by Henri Matisse, Alberto Giacometti, and Paul Cézanne.

A video still of ‘Studio Cézanne: An Electro-Acoustic Sound Installation in Four Parts’, 2016 © Brigitte Witzerhause

The museum’s entrance area houses a rotating programme of exhibitions, and the museum’s overall exhibition space totals 1,250 square metres.

In 2013, the Museum Berggruen expanded with an auxiliary building, undertaken by the architectural firm Kuehn Malvezzi, and added a publicly accessible garden featuring a sculpture by Thomas Schütte. — AFP-Relaxnews