They are going to close the Neue Nationalgalerie for renovation, that*s what Thomas Scheibitz told me when I met him on Albrechtstraße, and he should know, because he has an exhibition on right now right there, called, of all things, Bube Dame König Ass, is there are more stupid title in the world than this? Anyway, he was nice and thoughtful and thorough as always, this is the way some East Germans are, it always makes me a little uncomfortable, as if I am not living up to their standards, whatever they might be. There is no aggressiveness in it, he just tries to answer my questions the best way he can, he really thinks about the answers, maybe that is in itself something that people have stopped doing. I know that the problem is on my side, not on his side. Anyway, what he said about the Neue Nationalgalerie, a signature building of post-war modernism in Berlin, was that there are so many structural problems that they will close it for three to four years. And after that you won*t recognize it anymore. The feng shui master of architecture, David Chipperfield, is going to perform one of his magic tricks, it will be tasteful, it will be dull, it will not be modernism and it will not be postmodernism and it will not be anything else: David Chipperfield, I just realized, is a big mistake. He will take Mies* daring, Mies* beauty, Mies* emptiness – and just fill it with the recreation of something that resembles something. Thomas Scheibitz was very subdued about all this, he spoke about the exhibition, he spoke about the other painters, all his generation, all in their mid-fourties, it is the work of the last 20 years that is shown there, I have not seen it yet, I only heard that Thomas* work is the only work that will prevail. I will go there this week, I think, I promise, I probably won*t. But I will always feel sad, I already do, about these three to four years and the time there after: post Mies van der Rohe. A difference in style, in attitude, in the way you see the world. One more loss without a gain.