Originally called the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum after
Emperor Frederick III, the museum was renamed in honor of its first curator,
Wilhelm von Bode, in 1956. During
World War II, portions of the collection were stored in an antiaircraft tower called the
Flakturm Friedrichshain for safe keeping. In May 1945, several fires destroyed some of the collections. In total, more than 400 paintings and about 300 sculptures were missing due to looting during the fire or destroyed in the fire itself. Closed for repairs since 1997, the museum was reopened on 18 October 2006, after a €156 million refurbishment. True to the ethos of its founding director, Wilhelm von Bode, who believed in mixing art collections, it is now the home for a collection of sculptures,
Byzantine art, and
coins and medals. The presentation of the collections is both geographic and chronological, with the Byzantine and Gothic art of northern and southern Europe displayed separately on the museum's first floor and a similar regional division of Renaissance and Baroque art on its second floor. File:Botticelli madonna DLI 14105010920.jpg|thumb|Sandro Botticelli, "Madonna and Child with Angels Carrying Candlesticks," c. 1485/1490, formerly the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin, destroyed 1945 in Flakturm Friedrichshain fire, Department of Image Collections, National Gallery of Art Library, Washington, DC The sculpture collection displays artwork of the
Christian Orient (with an emphasis on
Coptic Egypt), sculptures from
Byzantium and
Ravenna, sculptures of the
Middle Ages, the
Italian Gothic, and the early
Renaissance, including the controversial
Flora attributed by Bode to
Leonardo da Vinci but now widely argued to be a 19th-century work. Late German Gothic works are also represented by
Tilman Riemenschneider, the south German Renaissance, and Prussian
Baroque art up to the 18th century. In the future, selected works of the will be integrated into the sculpture collection. This is reminiscent of William von Bode's concept of "style rooms", in which sculptures, paintings, and crafts are viewed together, as was usual in upper middle-class private collections. The
Münzkabinett ("coin cabinet") is one of the world's largest
numismatic collections. Its range spans from the beginning of
minting in the 7th century BC in
Asia Minor up to the present day. With approximately 500,000 items, the collection is a unique archive for historical research, while its medal collection also makes it an important art exhibition. Writing in the
Financial Times on the occasion on the museum's reopening in 2006,
Neil MacGregor, director of the
British Museum, hailed "the most comprehensive display of European sculpture anywhere." He added: "It is no exaggeration to say that in the new Bode Museum, Europe will be able for the first time to read its history — aesthetic and religious, intellectual and political — in a three-dimensional form." ==Canadian gold coin theft==