Mies left his homeland in 1937 after the Nazis rejected his high modern style as insufficiently German in character. The commission for the Neue Nationalgalerie museum marked his return to Berlin after more than twenty years teaching and practicing in the United States. The building was completed in 1968, one year before Mies's death. The open, flexible plan is free of supporting columns. The building mechanisms are hidden away, as are the museum's galleries, which are sunk below ground, leaving an airy gallery pavilion enclosed by glass curtain walls on street level.
Gallery label from From the Collection: 1960-69, March 26, 2016 - March 12, 2017.