The Museum Barberini recorded 377,343 visits in 2024 (2023: 358,130). Of these, 184,600 visits were to the Munch exhibition, 146,520 to the Modigliani show and 96,397 to the Vlaminck retrospective, which closed yesterday, Sunday. This makes 2024, alongside the opening year 2017 and 2019, one of the most popular years for the still young museum. Munch. Lebenslandschaft was the museum’s second most successful exhibition to date.
Image above: Besucherin in der Vlaminck-Schau, © Sebastian Bolesch.
In addition to the numerous individual visitors, the Museum Barberini welcomed 49,434 guests to guided tours, workshops, lectures, concerts and other events last year (2023: 45,519). 2,828 groups alone experienced the Barberini as a lively place of mediation on guided tours for adults, children and school classes. 15,392 Barberini Friends annual tickets sold underline the continuously growing interest in the museum’s work (2023: 14,643).
‘Munch’s nature paintings were a surprise for many guests. With Modigliani. Modern Views, we were able to present a view of Modigliani that did not repeat the eternally circulated image, and also provide new important impulses for research. Vlaminck’s painterly oeuvre in the major retrospective, the first in Germany for almost 100 years, was a discovery for many visitors and museum colleagues alike. We are delighted that we were able to present these treasures together with the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, the MUNCH, Oslo, the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart and the Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal,’ explains Ortrud Westheider, Director of the Museum Barberini.
According to Westheider, collaborations with the Norwegian, French and Italian embassies, the Berlinische Galerie, the Kupferstichkabinett and the Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, as well as the Potsdam Film Museum and the Music Festival, have also given the exhibitions and the accompanying programme a great deal of momentum.
Now 40 works by Monet in the collection
The Impressionism collection and the numerous events organised to mark the 150th anniversary of Impressionism, including themed tours, symposia, lectures and workshops, also made a decisive contribution to the Barberini’s great visitor success. With the 1888 painting Antibes from the Gardens of Salis, the 40th work by Monet and the fourth purchase by the Hasso Plattner Foundation in the course of the year, the Impressionism collection grew to 115 works in 2024. Ortrud Westheider: ‘We are overjoyed that the Foundation has acquired these outstanding examples of Impressionist painting. With these acquisitions, the Barberini is strengthening its international position as a unique collection location that makes the landscape painting of French Impressionism more consistently comprehensible than almost any other.’

2025: Kandinsky, Pissarro, Einhorn
The comprehensive survey exhibition Kosmos Kandinsky. Geometric Abstraction in the 20th Century from 15 February to 18 May 2025 spans six decades and, with more than 120 works by over seventy artists, including Josef Albers, Sonia Delaunay, Wassily Kandinsky, Agnes Martin, Piet Mondrian, Bridget Riley, Frank Stella and Victor Vasarely, shows how Geometric Abstraction has repeatedly found new expression in Europe and the USA. Among the more than thirty international lenders are the Royal Academy of Arts, London, the Fondation Beyeler, Riehen near Basel, the Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum, New York, the Louisiana, Humlebæk, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington.
Based on around 80 landscapes, cityscapes, still lifes and figure paintings from around 50 international collections, the exhibition Mit offenem Blick. The Impressionist Pissarro provides an overview of the artist’s entire oeuvre (14 June to 28 September 2025). Unicorn. The mythical creature in art presents over 100 works from international lenders, including the Louvre, Paris, Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, Metropolitan Museum, New York, Prado, Madrid, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and Victoria & Albert Museum, London (25 October 2025 – 1 February 2026).