The Berlin art dealer Heiner Bastian and his family announced they will give their house near Museum Island to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, the organisation that oversees the city’s museums.
The house, designed by the British architect David Chipperfield and completed in 2007, currently showcases contemporary and modern art as the home of Galerie Bastian and of Contemporary Fine Arts. The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation plans to use it for education purposes.
“We are really surprised!” said Hermann Parzinger, the foundation’s president. “Such generous presents don’t come every day. The Bastian House now belongs to whole generations of future museum-goers.”
Just one week ago, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation had announced that Reinhold Würth, the billionaire art collector who made his fortune producing screws, would step in to make a donation that would enable the foundation to buy the house. With the Bastian family’s decision, Würth’s donation is no longer required.
The foundation aims to open the Bastian House to the public at the end of 2017 or early 2018. It will serve to prepare visitors to Museum Island, particularly schoolchildren and families, by giving an overview of the museums and their collections.
Chipperfield is also the architect behind the restoration of the Neues Museum, opposite the Bastian House on Museum Island, and for the renovation of the Neue Nationalgalerie near Potsdamer Platz.