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Annual reception and focal points of the SPK in 2026
Press release from 02/27/2026
Annual reception at the James-Simon-Galerie - Ackermann: We offer a strong programme and face challenges - good visitor balance 2025 - focus on educational and mediation work
Almost 300 guests from politics, culture, science, business, tourism and society attended the annual reception of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation on Thursday (26 February) in the James-Simon-Galerie on Museum Island. Marion Ackermann, SPK President since June 2025, hosted this special evening for the first time. Her guests included the Minister of State for Culture and the Media, Wolfram Weimer, who is also Chairman of the SPK Foundation Board, as well as the Director of the German Historical Institute in Warsaw, Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska, and Sandra Richter, who heads the German Literature Archive in Marbach. Both are members of the Foundation's new International Advisory Board.
Members of the German Bundestag and the Berlin House of Representatives, numerous Berlin directors, museum directors and heads of well-known companies were welcomed. Artists such as Olafur Eliasson, Thomas Struth and Andreas Mühe were also among the guests. In keeping with tradition, the SPK institutions presented their highlights and focal points for the current year.
The foundation president said: "We have a very strong programme this year - from Göbekli Tepe to Constantin Brancusi, from Paul Cassirer to Sophie Calle, from Berlin press photography to the 250th birthday of Queen Luise and 'Music on Demand'. Although Berlin tourism is stagnating, we maintained our visitor numbers last year with 3.6 million visitors to the museums. This gives us new momentum and motivates us greatly. I am grateful to the federal and state governments that we will receive 12 million euros more from this year. Half of this will go towards new special exhibitions. We need them. Education and outreach work is also particularly close to my heart. There is enormous potential here. It's about facing up to the challenges of our time, taking up and initiating social discourse."
The Chairman of the SPK Foundation Council, Minister of State Wolfram Weimer, emphasised: "The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation preserves an incomparable treasure of our cultural history. It bears responsibility for keeping it visible in the present and the future. The SPK's 2026 annual programme promises to give it a major boost by systematically digitising its collections, entering into new collaborations at home and abroad and reaching even broader and more diverse target groups with innovative exhibitions and educational programmes. We are doing our utmost to support the foundation in all its endeavours."
The Gemäldegalerie showed how the foundation aims to inspire new groups of visitors with a digitisation project that went online on the evening of the annual reception: In cooperation with Google Arts & Culture, the world-famous collection has been digitally catalogued in unprecedented depth and quality. The project includes the extremely high-resolution digitisation of more than 1,100 paintings, the creation of more than 50 online stories curated by the Gemäldegalerie as well as a themed page bundling the content. This makes the project one of the most ambitious and comprehensive digitisation projects on Google Arts & Culture worldwide to date. The project is part of a partnership between the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and the company that has existed since 2011.
The State Library is focussing heavily on the topic of AI - not only as a user, but also in application development: the trial project "From audio to text: Automatic Speech Recognition in the Stabi (ASR)" was presented. This involves transcribing audiovisual collections and making them available in standardised, machine-readable formats. The map department of the State Library is also taking on a coordinating role in the development of a co-operative network for the long-term archiving and availability of digital geodata.
From 12 June, the Stabi Kulturwerk will also host the exhibition "In the rhythm of the big city - 100 years of photography and the press in Berlin": for over a century, press photography has been a seismograph of the city, reporting on dynamics, contradictions and the insatiable hunger for stories. The exhibition with photographs from the bpk photo archive, newspapers from the Staatsbibliothek's collection and works by the OSTKREUZ agency takes us into the interplay between journalism, photography and urban life.
AI is also a topic at the State Institute for Music Research: the Institute is exploring hyper-reproduction in music and the associated daily production of millions of AI-generated tracks with the seventh edition of the international conference series "AI Music Creativity", which is being organised jointly with the TU and the UdK in September. The conference will address the question of how automated systems are changing musical practice and listening. In December, the exhibition "Music on Demand: Records, Cassettes, Streaming!" will open at the Musikinstrumenten-Museum, focussing on recording and playback technologies - the gramophone was invented 140 years ago and Spotify has been around for twenty years. And because beautiful sound also requires a beautiful form, milestones in design are also touched upon.
The role of Latin America in the volatile global situation is the topic of the conference "Contested Democracies: Latin America in Transregional Perspective" organised by the German Latin American Studies Association (ADLAF) from 18 to 20 June at the Ibero-American Institute. The IAI has chaired the ADLAF since 2024.
The Secret State Archives of Prussian Cultural Heritage will be celebrating the 250th birthday of Queen Louise of Prussia. On 10 March, there will be an entire Luise Evening in Dahlem - with lectures, but also with personal letters and notes, account books, contemporary maps, prints and books, medallions and memorabilia. They provide an insight into Luise's life and shed light on her mythical exaltation: as a wife, mother, political actor and identification figure in a time of profound upheaval.
Further highlights presented in the stage programme:
The Hamburger Bahnhof - Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart is celebrating its 30th birthday with eight special exhibitions featuring Giuseppe and the artist. birthday with eight special exhibitions featuring Giulia Andreani,
Sophie Calle, Tacita Dean, Thomas Demand, Olafur Eliasson,
Ayşe Erkmen, Shilpa Gupta, Henrik Håkansson, Lina Lapelytė,
[ materialistin ], Ryuichi Sakamoto and Tomás Saraceno as well as a new collection presentation with works by Pierre Huyghe, Bunny Rogers, Katharina Sieverding, Rirkrit Tiravanija and many others. The highlight is the anniversary weekend from 13 to 15 November, when an international conference will discuss the future of contemporary collection museums and the museum will be open for 30 hours.
From 20 March, the Centre Pompidou from Paris will be making a one-off guest appearance in Berlin at the Neue Nationalgalerie, bringing with it works by one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century: Constantin Brancusi! His organic sculptures, reduced to the essentials, made the Romanian-French artist a pioneer of sculptural abstraction. The Neue Nationalgalerie is showing the first exhibition of this exceptional artist's work in Germany for over 50 years. Even his studio will be on show!
And another jubilarian is celebrating this year: the Alte Nationalgalerie is 150 years old and is the focus of the Museum Island anniversary. The gallery is giving itself and its visitors a present with the exhibition "Cassirer and the Breakthrough of Impressionism", which will be on display from 22 May. The art dealer Paul Cassirer brought Impressionism to Germany. In the year of the 100th anniversary of his death, the Alte Nationalgalerie is showing 120 works associated with his work, which brought artists such as Degas, Cézanne, Manet, Monet, Renoir and van Gogh to the attention of German-speaking countries for the first time.
There will once again be an island festival on 6 and 7 June. The motto of this year's
UNESCO World Heritage Day on Sunday is "Together for Peace and Understanding". The SPK has therefore invited partner organisations from across Germany to the Museum Island Berlin to discuss the heritage and future of democracy, including the Hambach Castle Foundation, the Foundation Places of German Democratic History, the Berlin Wall Foundation, the Gay Museum and the Berliner Festspiele.
Another highlight on the Museum Island will follow from 21 October: the exhibition "Genghis Khan and the World of the Mongols" in the James-Simon-Galerie is a cooperation between the Museum of Prehistory and Early History and the Genghis Khan National Museum in Ulan Bator. Genghis Khan is one of the most famous rulers in the world. He and his descendants built the largest empire in world history between the Sea of Japan and the mouth of the Danube. 800 years after his death, the exhibition provides an insight into the enormous military, economic and cultural impact of the Mongols, the consequences of which are still felt today.
From 16 October, the Picture Gallery will be showing the exhibition "Portraits! Surprising encounters from Botticelli to Lempicka": The museum dares to present surprising pairings of portrait art - works from the 15th to 20th centuries that have never met before now do! These include masterpieces by Botticelli and Lempicka, Dürer and Giorgione or Rubens and Gainsborough. It's all about status and emotions. The pairings reveal astonishing similarities and bring the works to life in a new way.
And from 14 November, the Kunstgewerbemuseum will be showing "World of Colours - 100 Years of Verner Panton": hardly any other designer embodies the spirit of optimism of the 1960s as consistently as the Dane Verner Panton, who would have celebrated his 100th birthday on 13 February. With colours, organic shapes and innovative materials, he revolutionised interiors and shaped a new attitude to life. The Panton Chair became a legend, as did the Spiegel canteen. To mark the 100th anniversary of his birth, the Museum of Decorative Arts is dedicating a special exhibition to him.
From 24 April, the Museum of European Cultures will be presenting the most valuable objects from the textile collection of the Danube Swabian Central Museum. "Heavy Fabric. Women - Traditional Costumes - Life Stories" shows garments in bright colours on a golden background next to deep black bridal attire. Traditional Danube Swabian costumes provide surprising insights into the lives of women and girls in the past. In the future, the MEK will also be represented with exhibitions in the Humboldt Forum.
Press photos
Highlights 2026 and annual reception 2026:
www.preussischer-kulturbesitz.de/newsroom/presse/pressebilder.html
