Our guest on this episode is Thomas W. Gaehtgens, the former director of the Getty Research Institute.

In this episode:

Schinkel’s Altes Museum in Berlin (1823-1830) and the Romantic idea of the sacred in art (1:45) — Assembling royal collections for the new museum; how Napoleon spurred the development of national collections in Europe (2:45) — Making art accessible to the public, in order to promote the moral improvement of its viewers; self-discovery and character development (4:45) — A royal collection in the Enlightenment; the king gives his collection to the people (6:15) — From early 19th-century Romanticism to Wilhelm von Bode‘s idea of a period room c. 1900 (8:45) — How did Bode’s concept of the period room develop? (12:00) — Two competing concepts of the museum: the ethnological and the masterpiece (18:30) — Conflicts of taste in the late 19th century: academic conservatism vs. internationalism (23:00) — How Impressionism came to Berlin (25:00) — The relationships among the different museums on Berlin’s Museum Island: including the Altes Museum, the Neues Museum, the Alte Nationalgalerie, the Bode Museum, and the Pergamon Museum (30:00)