Albertinum
The Albertinum is a museum of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden on Brühl's Terrace, showing art from the Romantic period to the present in a building that began as the arsenal of 1559 to 1563.
What it is
The Galerie Neue Meister and the Skulpturensammlung ab 1800 (sculpture from 1800) are at home in the building. Painting and sculpture are shown side by side. The Galerie Neue Meister was founded in 1959, and its collection first came from the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister.
History
The building began as the arsenal (Zeughaus), built from 1559 to 1563. Parts of the 16th-century arsenal survive, among them the ground-floor hall with Tuscan columns and two portals.
From 1884 the arsenal was converted into a museum for the sculpture collection, given its Neo-Renaissance appearance, and named after the reigning King Albert. The conversion was in the charge of Carl Adolf Canzler, the state's chief architect (Oberlandbaumeister).
The Albertinum was damaged in the bombing of Dresden in 1945. In the 1950s the art taken to the Soviet Union after the war came back to Dresden, and the Albertinum became the place where the returned collections were shown. After the upper floor was reconstructed in 1961 to 1965, the Galerie Neue Meister moved into the Albertinum in 1965. The Albertinum reopened in 2010 after its renovation.
The ark over the courtyard
After the Elbe flood of 2002 the building was renovated and given flood-safe stores and restoration workshops in a structure raised above the inner courtyard. This raised store, called the "Arche" (ark), was designed by Staab Architekten of Berlin.