encounters provoke him, as he said in a 2002 inter-
view, to ‘‘tell the story of being here at this moment
in time.’’
LYLERexer
Seealso:Barthes, Roland; Evans, Walker; Franck,
Martine; Image Theory: Ideology; Life; Photographic
Theory; Photographic ‘‘Truth’’; Sander, August; Son-
tag, Susan; Strand, Paul; Visual Anthropology
Biography
Born London, November 26, 1926. Educated St. Edward’s
School, Oxford. Won scholarship to Central School of
Art, London, but education interrupted for two year’s
military service, 1944–1946. Resumed education for three
years at Chelsea School of Art, London. Exhibiting pain-
ter throughout the late 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. Writer
for weeklyTribune. Appointed art critic for theNew
Statesman, 1951, provoking controversy for his Marxist
views and defense of realism. First novel,A Painter of
Our Time, published in 1958 and withdrawn from pub-
lication under pressure from the CIA. Throughout the
1960s published poems, novels, criticism, translations,
and first photographic collaboration with Jean Mohr.
Won Booker Prize in 1972 for novelGand donated half
the prize money to U.S. radical group Black Panthers.
Developed ground-breaking BBC television series on art,
Ways of Seeing, aired in 1972. Moved permanently to
small village in Haut Savoie in the French Alps, 1974.
Subsequently collaborated on scripts for three films with
director Alain Tanner and published a series of novels on
peasant life,Into Their Labors. Continues to write arti-
cles, essays, poems, and novels.Further Reading
Berger, John.The Look of Things. New York: Viking, 1971.
———.The Success and Failure of PicassoNew York:
Pantheon, 1980 (1965).
———.About Looking. New York: Pantheon, 1980.
———.The Sense of Sight. New York: Pantheon, 1985.
Berger, John, and Patricia Macdonald.Once In Europa.
London: Bloomsbury, 1999.
Berger, John, and Jean Mohr.A Fortunate Man. New York:
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967.
———.Another Way of Telling. New York: Pantheon, 1982.
Baker, Kenneth. ‘‘Q & A John Berger: The Moment of
Truth is Now.’’San Francisco Chronicle(January 6,
2002).BERLINISCHE GALERIE
On November 21, 1975, the Berlinische Galerie was
opened as a private society by fifteen patrons and
interested citizens of the city of Berlin, Germany.
The society stated
The Berlinische Galerie is a museum which collects art
works and material concerning the artistic and cultural
history of Berlin from the fields of visual art, architec-
ture, artistic photography, applied art and design, carry-
ing our research into these and making them available to
the public.
(Quoted in Jo ̈rn Merkert, ‘‘Berlin or the Round
Head’’, in theBerlinische Galerie visits Dublin, Dublin
1991, p. 12.)As the founding director, Eberhard Roters
envisioned a museum that would highlight Berlin
art history in all fields from 1870 to the present,
which no other museum in the city was doing.
Suchanendeavorinathendividedcitywasno
easy task.
From the beginning there had been financial pro-
blems, but Roters’ early vision was well targeted
and persistent, resulting in an interdisciplinary col-
lection of Berlin art from 1870 to the present that
included painting, graphic arts, sculpture, video,
photography, architecture, and the archives and
papers of various artists. Roters chose to stay in
the public eye by mounting changing thematic or
monographic exhibits, rather than a permanent
exhibition of the growing collection, and by conti-
nually announcing new acquisitions. A primary
benefactor for the new museum, as for a number
of the other Berlin museums was the Foundation
Deutsche Klassenlotterie in Berlin.
In 1986 the fledgling museum moved to the pres-
tigious Martin-Gropius Bau, designed by Martin
Gropius and constructed in 1881. Designed in a
style similar to an Italian Renaissance palace, the
building contained beautiful mosaics, reliefs illus-
trating the different arts and crafts, and crests atBERLINISCHE GALERIE