German software mogul and art collector Hasso Plattner is opening a new private museum in the German city Potsdam, neighboring Berlin. The site for the new project is a 45-year old former restaurant building that the collector salvaged from demolition years ago.
A known top collector, Plattner made headlines for purchasing a record-setting $110.7 million Claude Monet haystack painting, titled Meules (1890). In 2017, he founded the Museum Barberini, another museum in Potsdam, dedicated to the tech magnate’s holdings of modern and Impressionist art, as well as artists active in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR).
In 2019, following public calls for the site to be preserved, Plattner bought the historic building that will host the new art center through his namesake foundation. The new space, called Das Minsk, will focus on East German artists who were active after the fall of the Berlin wall. Erected in the 1970s, the modernist style building was once host to a famed upscale restaurant of the same name that was established by Belarusian artists seeking to forge ties between the GDR and Soviet Union.
Construction on the project, which is host to two main floors with exhibition galleries and an outdoor terrace, first began in early January 2020. Slated to open later this month, the museum’s programming will be led by Paola Malavassi, who came on as founding director in 2020 after four year’s heading the Julia Stoschek Collection in Berlin.
The inaugural exhibition program, which opens on September 24 and runs through January 15, 2023, will feature the late East German painter Wolfgang Mattheuer and Canadian photographer and filmmaker Stan Douglas. Both artists produced work related to Potsdam in the post-Berlin-wall years.