Ever since the opening, in 1830, of Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s Königliches Museum, known today as the Altes Museum, and Friedrich Wilhelm IV’s declaration that the Museumsinsel was to be a ‘sanctuary for art and science’, research has played a crucial role in shaping the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Scholarship and the acquisition of knowledge were firmly anchored in the museums’ first ever statute of 1835.
Today the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin encompasses 15 museum collections, three research institutes (the Rathgen-Forschungslabor, Zentralarchiv, and Institut für Museumsforschung), as well as the Gipsformerei (Replica Workshop). All together, they make up one of the largest ‘universal’ museums in the world. They preserve, display, and publicize art and cultural treasures from throughout human history, from its very beginnings to the immediate present-day. Together, the museums form a giant research institute, where objects, primarily from the collections themselves, but also from elsewhere are studied and analyzed. They disseminate their knowledge and their experience to the public on both a national and international level and are particularly active in the area of university education.
