OFF-SITE EXHIBITION / Inventing Myths
19 June 2026 – 17 January 2027
Alte Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen, Berlin (Germany)
As part of its new cabinet exhibition series “InterNationalgalerie”, the Alte Nationalgalerie will invite national galleries and museums from around the world to showcase their collections in a dedicated space over the next few years. This year, the National Museum in Warsaw will kick off the series.
In 1876, Emperor Wilhelm I opened the ‘National-Galerie’, now known as the Alte Nationalgalerie, which has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site as part of the complex Museumsinsel Berlin since 1999. The inscription ‘Der deutschen Kunst’ (To German Art) can be seen on the pediment. Yet the newly opened Nationalgalerie by no means exhibited only art created in Germany. Even the donation by the banker Wagener, who presented 262 works to the Prussian king and thus laid the foundation for the Nationalgalerie, featured Italian, French, Swiss and Belgian artists alongside German ones.
As part of its new series, starting in 2026 the Alte Nationalgalerie will regularly invite national galleries and museums from around the world to showcase their collections in a dedicated space at the museum. How do these institutions interpret their historical heritage to inform forward-looking museum practice? How do they contextualise their collections? And in what directions are they developing their future programmes in light of changing issues, demands and challenges? The series kicks off with the National Museum in Warsaw, one of Poland’s largest and oldest museum institutions.
Under the title Inventing Myths, the Director of the National Museum in Warsaw, Agnieszka Lajus, in conversation with Anette Hüsch, Director of the Alte Nationalgalerie, has selected eight works that tell the story of Poland’s changing cultural and political conditions, of freedom, art and the life of an artist across three centuries – from the 19th century to the present day, including Polish Hamlet – Portrait of Aleksander Wielopolski, 1903, by Poland’s most important Symbolist painter, Jacek Malczewski (1854–1929).
A free brochure featuring an interview and essays by Agnieszka Lajus and Anette Hüsch will be published to accompany the exhibition.