The Neues Museum was conceived in the mid-19th century by Friedrich August Stüler, student of Karl Friedrich Schinkel. Even after the demise of parts of the collection during the war, the museum’s treasures still encompass the masterpieces of Troy excavator Heinrich Schliemann, highlights from ancient Egypt from 4000 BC up to the Roman Period – pinnacled by the famous bust of Queen Nefertiti – and a large collection emphasising prehistoric cultures of Europe and the Ancient Near East from their origin until the Middle Ages. Although the museum doesn’t explicitly say so, a fourth strand of meaning that is curated, is the institute’s own turbulent history, a story that had quite evocatively taken the shape of a building – a ruin, to be more precise.

Unity of fragments

The museum building has been restored in an outspoken (extreme to some) manner. Authenticity is anchored in the remains of the structure as it was shaped by history, the ’43-’45 shelling as its most decisive negative patina, that has been meticulously outlined by star-architect David Chipperfield. This approach towards history and the museum as a monument must have involved a thousand decisions on many different scales, and Chipperfield seems to have constantly jumped from one level to the next in untying this Gordian knot. Most importantly, the museum regained its spatial unity in lines of sight and outlines, material, colour and ‘soul’. But this is where Chipperfield’s modernism ends. Zooming in more closely, remnants of the original building have been fixed as ruin fragments, in a naked and surprisingly neutral manner. I am convinced that it is this lack of objectified sentimentality that adds to a genuinely emotional visitor experience. In short: without being told what to think, there is no escape to feeling this skilfully ‘prosthesticised’ museum’s unmediated phantom pains.

An inside-out showcase

The reconstructed building of the Neues Museum presents itself as a palimpsest: there are flaked-off room numbers on pillars, parts of names on walls, even the remains of a map, perhaps part of earlier exhibitions? Zooming out, there are the larger fragments of decorated stucco, parts of pillars and walls that ultimately fade into the newer structures at the higher levels of the building. The mix of old and contemporary elements is a spectacle indeed, and something strange happens when the museum’s interior is appreciated. One wonders… Can it be touched? A first reaction: ‘Of course it can, it’s just walls, pillars, benches, jambs!’ Or is it? There is a nagging confusion over the state of these details. As elements, they are are not isolated or commented upon in any way, they are on the contrary, gently absorbed in the total of the structure. But, in fairness, only a doubting Thomas would stick his fingers in the bullet holes that are present in the museum’s scarred interior walls. These visually strong elements have become objects in their own right. This is emphasised by the fact that the museum’s functional ‘collection space’ shies slightly away from its significance-laden walls. Like two ill-fitted nested dolls, there is a strip of space between the museum ‘floor for the collection’ and the ‘museum as historical artefact’. It is this ‘in-between space’ that subtly serves as a showcase for the latter. A traditional showcase in the sense that it isolates the ‘object’ from the observer, guiding the spectator’s eye, but quite extraordinary at the same time in the way that it operates from the inside out, from the centre to the walls. We have yet to find out what is means to objectify the objectifying instrument itself!

I can only conclude by saying that I am absolutely impressed by the result of this project. To me, this renovation is a strong statement against the alleged neutrality of the museum space that I have come to doubt. Also, here is a museum that introduces an image of the instability of history, which is daring for the type of institute that was conceived to congeal time and defy mortality. The Neues Museum refurbished building shows that time is passing, that shocks are absorbed, loss is processed and that rubble can be turned into intricate layers of beauty and significance.

Here is a selection of the clues that the Neues Museum has left for us mortals to ponder over. But there is much more to be found in the Neues Museum virtual tour!

It could be said that heritage in the broadest sense (things, places, rituals, narratives), must have some capacity of continuity – otherwise it could never be presented to an audience in a stable way. In fact, so it is said, this stability is one of the most important assets of the museum object: It functions as ‘proof’ and at the same time does it present us with life lines to the ‘other’ that is in the past, but also far away, of unearthly beauty, or unimaginable altogether. Surely, museums must tame this chaotic and incomprehensible ‘otherness’, if they wish to snatch the ’spoils of history’ from transitoriness. How do museums usually arrive at this? Showcases, explanatory text, silence… Or more exact: lifelessness, distance and a focus on knowledge are among the techniques that are applied for distilling the desired eternal and cerebral knowledge from the fluid and fugitive here-and-now.

Not in the Denis Severs House. This series of spaces are not an instruction, they are an opportunity: a portal to a possible experience, also says the motto of the house: you either see it or you don’t. Here there are no historical objects radiating eternal truths, just a subtle invitation to the wandering mind to yield to a personal creation – one out of a million. Is the Severs House an artwork? Or a theatrical scene? I would say the ‘trick’ of the Severs House is in fact the core strength of any museum, any significant display. The house unveils an important thruth: encoded knowledge may be replicated in a (more or less) stable and reliable form, but an unpredictable experience is personal perse. It may be invoked or facilitated, but could never be rigidly replicated. Are museums society’s tools that must distribute measurable, replicable knowledge? The Denis Severs House contrasts this mission by confronting its visitor (or better: its guest) in a very corporeal manner. Its magic is not lingual but poetic; its whisper is far from rational, its scenery is the unseen image – just around the corner, outside the picture frame. The caller fails to understand and explain, but on the contrary, he is struck by an overwhelming ‘being there’.

These and more images are found on this page on Flicr. More on the Severs House is found on the website www.dennissevershouse.co.uk, or on this Wikipedia entry.