The room nonetheless seems to have been made for this bust. The North Dome Room was originally intended to house Greek sculptures, as evidenced by the painted murals depicting heroes of classical antiquity. Here they are greeted by the impressive profile of the bust, which has once again been given a room of its own. Today, visitors begin their tour in the Sculpture Hall, then proceed through the Amarna rooms, where they encounter members of the royal family, represented by portrait heads, before entering the North Dome Room. The concept of staging the bust as the climax of a museum tour whose content has been thoughtfully developed, instead of placing it at the beginning of the exhibit, was also applied to the final installation in the North Dome Room of the Neues Museum. This allows viewers to better understand the bust in its artistic and historical context. Only after traversing the rooms dedicated to Egyptian sculpture and the other finds from Amarna, however, do they reach the central room in the middle of the exhibition. There, the bust of Nefertiti was not only given an almost monumental display case within a large, well-lit room, it was also embedded within a new context which no longer presented it as a solitary masterpiece of the Egyptian collection.įrom the landing of the upper floor, before they even enter the actual exhibition, visitors can already catch a glimpse of Nefertiti through the rotunda, if only from a distance. In 2005 the collection of the Ägyptisches Museum moved from Charlottenburg to the upper floor of the Altes Museum, the first step in its return to the Museumsinsel. This setting allowed the lighting to be optimised: the face, which had previously appeared merely pretty and unblemished, was now highlighted not only as a strikingly beautiful visage, but above all as a vibrant portrait expressing strength of character. In the early 1990s the sculpture was therefore given not only a larger showcase, but also a room of its own on the ground floor, where it stood alone in a dimly lit atmosphere. Following the reunification of Germany, the number of visitors to the Ägyptisches Museum and public interest in the bust increased significantly. The existing Egyptian galleries were completely full, so the former Greek Courtyard was roofed over to provide a space in which to exhibit the new, fragile objects.įor more than two decades it stood on the first floor of the rotunda as part of the exhibition tour. In order to appropriately display the Amarna finds, the galleries of the Neues Museum required significant renovation. On 11 July 1920, James Simon, one of the greatest patrons in the museums’ history, had donated the objects to the Ägyptisches Museum, including the bust of Nefertiti. A separate room was therefore planned for the permanent display of the art from Amarna. The exhibition, of limited duration due to the inclusion of loans from Egypt which had to be returned, sparked great public enthusiasm for this “novel” Egyptian art, which so radically broke with the style of the well-known ancient Egyptian artworks in the Neues Museum. The Amarna finds were first shown at the Neues Museum in November of 1913, but without the colourful bust. He later bequeathed it to the Ägyptisches Museum as a permanent loan, along with the other objects from the excavation. Simon initially displayed the bust in his villa on Tiergartenstrasse, where it was first presented to Emperor Wilhelm II. Along with the other finds from Amarna unearthed during the excavations of 1911–13 and allotted to the German team, it had entered the collection of James Simon, who had funded the excavations. Today the queen’s likeness stands in the North Dome Room on the second floor, but her museum career began in the Greek Courtyard. With the reopening of the Neues Museum in 2009, the colourful bust of Nefertiti returned to the building in which it was first publicly displayed 85 years earlier.
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