October 2002 - Nr. 10
Dresden Puts Porcelain
Back on Display
TWIG - Dresden’s priceless porcelain collection reopened to the public this week, after a three-year renovation project that expanded its wing in the Zwinger, the baroque palace that houses the city’s art museums. The current exhibition displays some 1,800 ceramic creations from the 17th and 18th centuries, still just a fraction of the 20,000 objects in the entire collection.
Martin Roth, director of the Dresden State Art Collections, said he was pleased to be able to announce some good news after weeks of headlines focused on the floods that drenched the city in August and the billions of euros of damage they had caused. Museum organizers managed to reopen the collection on schedule despite the disaster. So far the renovation project has cost approximately 8.5 million euros (US$8.4 million), according to museum director Ulrich Pietsch, and it has yet to be completed. This spring construction will resume next door in the Zwinger’s curving Bogengalerie, expanding the porcelain exhibition space a second time for a total of 21,000 square feet.
The Dresden porcelain collection dates back to Augustus the Strong (1670-1733), king of Poland and elector of Saxony, whose obsession with the fragile material - or "maladie de porcelaine," as he called it - drove him to acquire more than 14,500 Chinese and Japanese pieces by 1721. Augustus also launched porcelain production Europe, founding the world-renowned Meissen manufacturing company in 1710. The new exhibit presents the Dresden collection as a meeting point for Far Eastern and European culture. Porcelain pieces from Asia and Meissen are represented in equal parts, in a display that traces the history of the medium from its 14th-century Chinese roots to its heyday in central Europe. More information about the show is available at www.staatl-kunstsammlungen-dresden.de.
