Early 20th-Century Curatorial Strategies to Enhance the Power of Portraiture: Ludwig Justi and the National Portrait Gallery in Berlin 1913-1933

The emergence of the national portrait gallery as a museum phenomenon during the nineteenth century reflects a broader interest in portraiture at the time. The first of its kind was the National Portrait Gallery in London. Pivotal to the foundation of the gallery in 1856 was historian Thomas Carlyle’s declaration that a portrait had put him in contact with the past. In 1913, a German National Portrait Gallery was founded as part of the larger reorganisation of the Nationalgalerie in Berlin. It was initiated by director Ludwig Justi, who formulated a curatorial plan of how interiors and portraits needed to be arranged in order to enhance a visitor’s experience of the portraits on display as not just any kind of art but as a face-to-face encounter with people from the past.

The aim of this paper is thus to discuss the history of the National Portrait Gallery in Berlin, how portraits were displayed, and differences and similarities between the NPG in Berlin and predecessors such at the Walhalla in Bavaria and the NPG in London. Following W.J.T. Mitchell, who in What do Pictures Want? (2005) proposed ‘the relationality of image and beholder the field of investigation’, attention will be on the curatorial strategies used in order to enhance the public’s experience of presence and encounter in the museum space.