2016 - News - Detail Page - Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz

24 October, 11 a.m., Kunstgewerbemuseum Lecture Hall: City Talk "An Atlantis of Modernism - Remembering the Old Tiergarten Quarter"

31 Oct, 8 pm, Neue Nationalgalerie: concert with music from the Bauhaus

4 November, 6 pm, Berlin State Library (Potsdamer Platz): Lecture "The path of the book - The Scharoun building between book and road traffic"

11 November, 7 pm, St. Matthew's Church: City Talk "More than this - Dys(u)topical thinking in the arts"

18 Nov, 8 pm, Neue Nationalgalerie: City Talk: Max Hollein and Hermann Parzinger

23 November, 6 pm, Ibero-American Institute: City Talk "Shared Knowledge and Multiperspectivity"

- On Sunday, 24 October, at the best matinee time at 11 a.m. in the Kunstgewerbemuseum's lecture hall, the theme is "An Atlantis of Modernism - Remembering the Old Tiergarten Quarter". Journalist Peter von Becker, author Kirsty Bell, architecture critic Nikolaus Bernau, university lecturer and monument conservator Gabi Dolff-Bonekämper and deputy director of the Art Library Joachim Brand will be guests at this city talk. The discussion will be moderated by Moritz Wullen. The Tiergarten neighbourhood, which was destroyed in the Second World War, was more than just a place of residence for the upper classes. Since the middle of the 19th century, art has been created, traded, collected, exhibited, communicated and critically reflected upon here. This "Atlantis of modernity" is still waiting to be rediscovered from visual and textual sources, architectural and urban planning traces and the recorded memories of its residents. In addition to the history of the site, which has been largely suppressed since National Socialism, the event will also focus on the methods and necessity of remembrance.

- Bauhaus music will be played in a concert at the Neue Nationalgalerie on Sunday, 31 October at 8 pm. Unjustly forgotten: In this concert, members of the Berliner Philharmoniker will honour the memory of persecuted composers of the Nazi era, Pavel Haas and Erwin Schulhoff, whose promising lives as composers came to a cruel end in concentration camps, as well as Hanns Eisler and Ernst Toch, who escaped Nazi terror by emigrating. Two works by the American composer Roger Tréfousse, who covers almost all genres from chamber music to film music, will also be performed.

- A lecture by Dr Hannah Wiemer from the Humboldt University of Berlin at the Staatsbibliothek in Potsdamer Straße on Thursday, 4 November at 6 p.m. is dedicated to the topic "The Path of the Book - The Scharoun Building between Book and Road Traffic": Traffic connections are a central element of Hans Scharoun's vision of a "spiritual bond" of cultural institutions - as they are for the box conveyor belt system of books in the Staatsbibliothek. What are the connections between these so very different ribbons?

- Helgard Haug from Rimini Protokoll, the architect Friedrich von Borries and the artist Mischa Kuball will meet on Thursday, 11 November at 7 pm in St. Matthäus-Kirche for a city talk entitled "More than this - Dys(u)topical thinking in the arts". Under the moderation of Ann-Katrin Günzel from KUNSTFORUM International, they will discuss artistic thinking in the present and the future. What scenarios do they create and what do they mean for our present - not least in Berlin's Kulturforum?

- In the new Neue Nationalgalerie, SPK President Hermann Parzinger will meet Max Hollein on Thursday, 18 November at 8 pm: the current director of the Metropolitan Museum in New York was a child when his father, the architect Hans Hollein, was busy combining the Berlin Kulturforum into a meaningful whole. Today, the director of the Metropolitan Museum in New York is himself busy trying to fascinate visitors for a place of art. And he asks himself what guests expect from a museum today - and what they don't. How do museums cope with crises and what will happen to cultural centres in general? Lisa Zeitz, editor-in-chief of "Weltkunst", will moderate the discussion.

- "Shared knowledge and multi-perspectivity" will be discussed at a city talk on Tuesday, 23 November at 6 pm at the Ibero-American Institute. Latin America with its various countries has a geographical and also imaginary location at the Kulturforum, the Ibero-American Institute (IAI), which is dedicated to scientific and cultural exchange with Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal. Based on its genuinely international, multidisciplinary profile, the IAI, together with representatives of other intermediary institutions and cultural practitioners, would like to reflect on how cultural interdependencies and non-European perspectives can be brought more into the focus of the debate.

The Berlin Cultural Forum is a product of utopian thinking. Rising from the ruins, it has not only produced some of Berlin's most important cultural institutions in the form of architectural icons of modernism, but also hundreds of unrealised designs that were sparked by the emptiness of a post-war wasteland. Even its prehistory tells an ambivalent story of utopia: from Prussia's early yearning for Italy in the old Tiergarten district to the Nazis' fantasies of great power ("Welthauptstadt Germania") to the dreams of a West Berlin museum island, a cultural campus of the free world just a few metres from the Wall.
The institutions gathered at the Kulturforum are exploring this utopian history together for the first time: on the initiative of the St. Matthew's Foundation, Cultural Foundation of the Protestant Church in Berlin. Matthäus, the cultural foundation of the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (EKBO) and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK), and with the support of the Capital Cultural Fund, the Art Library, the Museum of Decorative Arts and the New National Gallery of the National Museums in Berlin as well as the Berlin State Library have joined forces, the Ibero-American Institute and the Berliner Philharmoniker Foundation have joined forces to explore the utopian potential of their own institutions and the Kulturforum as a whole, past and present, in exhibitions, artistic interventions and city talks.

Individual aspects of this history come to light in the surrounding buildings: St Matthew's Church as a memorial to a vanished district, Hans Scharoun's vision of a non-hierarchical music and reading landscape in the Philharmonie and Staatsbibliothek, Mies van der Rohe's visionary combination of art and city in the Nationalgalerie and Rolf Gutbrod's unfinished attempt at a forum with connections across the Landwehr Canal and to the Tiergarten. In the artistic interventions and urban dialogues of the individual buildings, the historical perspectives become springboards into the present.

Further information about the project "Utopie Kulturforum" can be found on the homepage: www.utopie-kulturforum.berlin.

Press photos: www.preussischer-kulturbesitz.de/newsroom/presse/pressebilder.html

Contacts:
St Matthew's Foundation:
Pastor Hannes Langbein; info@stiftung-stmatthaeus.de
Press contact: Katrin Geuther; geuther@stiftung-stmatthaeus.de
www.stiftung-stmatthaeus.de
Berliner Philharmoniker Foundation:
Oliver Hilmes; o.hilmes@berliner-philharmoniker.de
Press contact: Elisabeth Hilsdorf; e.hilsdorf@berliner-philharmoniker.de
www.berliner-philharmoniker.de
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin:
Kunstbibliothek: Joachim Brand; j.brand@smb.spk-berlin.de
Kunstgewerbemuseum: c.banz@smb.spk-berlin.de; www.smb.kunstgewerbemuseum
Neue Nationalgalerie: Fiona Geuß (Press); f.geuss@smb.spk-berlin.de
www.smb.museum
Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin:
Specialist contact: gudrun.nelson-busch@sbb.spk-berlin.de
Press contact: jeanette.lamble@sbb.spk-berlin.de
www.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de
Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut
Specialist contact: roemer@iai.spk-berlin.de
Press contact: presse@iai.spk-berlin.de
www.iai.spk-berlin.de