“Degenerate” art in Berlin

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For our Geo Quiz, we want the name of a historic art museum in Germany. Built in the late 1800′s it’s survived the Nazis and WWII bombardment. The museum’s most renowned art object just may be a 3,000-year-old limestone bust of one of the most famous and beautiful women of the ancient world: Eqyptian queen Nefertiti.

Besides this ancient icon of beauty, some “degenerate art” is now being displayed. These are sculptures and bronzes that were trashed by the Nazis, who considered the art morally decadent. But the works turned up unexpectedly during street excavations in an old section of Berlin.

So, this museum we want you to name is situated on an island in the Spree River. It’s part of a cluster of art museums on what’s called Museum Island.

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Geo Answer:

The answer is the Neues Museum in Berlin. The museum’s currently exhibiting some recently unearthed sculptures. They are among some 20,000 works of modern German art that were confiscated by the Nazis. David Hecht takes up the story.

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• See some of the ‘degenerate’ art in this slideshow