Mit Dr. des. Anna Fricke

Dr. des. Anna Fricke (Kuratorin des Bereichs Film und bildende Kunst, Deutsches Filmmuseum) f&uuml;hrt durch die Ausstellung und erl&auml;utert die Bez&uuml;ge zwischen Fassbinders Werk und Arbeiten zeitgen&ouml;ssischer K&uuml;nstlerinnen und K&uuml;nstler.

Gropius Bau

Gropius Bau 2023

Kuratorenführungen zur Ausstellung „Fassbinder – JETZT“

Curators’ Guided Tours through the exhibition “Fassbinder – NOW”

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Located in the centre of Berlin, the Gropius Bau is a lively place for encounters with art and each other. As an internationally renowned exhibition centre, it offers space for major exhibitions and performances by contemporary artists.

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There are currently no exhibitions on view at Gropius Bau.

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Gropius Bau 2026

Events

Exhibitions & Projects

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Our newsletters keep you updated on current and upcoming exhibitions and events. Learn more about our kids programme and plan your next visit.

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We’re Looking Forward to Welcoming You Again in March!

Gropius Bau is currently closed for exhibition preparations. Our restaurant Beba and our bookstore will reopen on 4 March, before we kick off our spring programme, featuring a performance by <a href="${link:{uuid:{16d14ae2-9463-45b4-91de-95a846c0f377},repository:{website},path:{/bfs-de/gropius-bau/programm/2026/veranstaltungen/leila-hekmat}}}">Leila Hekmat</a>, the <a href="${link:{uuid:{fd3f9e70-97e8-46fb-b639-fc701f8d4039},repository:{website},path:{/bfs-de/gropius-bau/programm/baubau/veranstaltungen/baubau-play-day-pop-up-26}}}">big pop-up</a> of our play space BAUBAU and the opening of our <a href="${link:{uuid:{baa82be9-6411-41e5-806b-4889004c8459},repository:{website},path:{/bfs-de/gropius-bau/programm/2026/ausstellungen/peter-hujar-liz-deschenes}}}">Peter Hujar / Liz Deschenes</a> exhibition. Find more details in our <a href="${link:{uuid:{62c3018b-bb40-46ce-8019-646ec5cd2e4a},repository:{website},path:{/bfs-de/gropius-bau/besuch/informationen}}}">Information &amp; Tickets</a> section.

See You Soon

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Tickets for ten selected concert highlights of the Musikfest Berlin, which in 2026 will also mark the 75th anniversary of the Berliner Festspiele, are available. The programme includes Gy&ouml;rgy Ligeti’s grotesquely humorous anti-opera Le Grand Macabre and George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.

Musikfest Berlin

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In 2026 the Berliner Festspiele celebrate their 75th anniversary. A selection of events programmed throughout the entire year engage take the anniversary as their theme or mark the occasion with works at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele, the Gropius Bau, the Philharmonie Berlin, on Berlin’s Ringbahn and at other locations in the city.&nbsp;

75 Years of the Berliner Festspiele

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MaerzMusik invites you to concerts, performances, installations and discourse formats at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele and several other venues in Berlin. The programme will be announced on 29 January, with advance ticket sales beginning on the same day.is published; advance ticket sales are on.

MaerzMusik

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The Theatertreffen’s jury of critics announced their selection of the 10 most remarkable productions for the 2026 Theatertreffen. The programme will be published on 2 April, advance ticket sales will begin on 18 April at 10:00.

Theatertreffen

More Berliner Festspiele

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A Free Play Day for Everyone

BAUBAU Play Day Pop-up

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The Practice – What Moves Artists

The Practice – What Moves Artists&nbsp;is a book series by Gropius Bau that invites artists to showcase a practice that they pursue, that has influenced them or that has been with them for a long time. In the second volume of the series, artist, performer and author Vaginal Davis looks back on the saucy underground scenes of Los Angeles and Berlin together with former bandmates.&nbsp;On Dangerous Ground recounts past gigs, spectacular live performances and well-kept secrets.

Vaginal Davis: On Dangerous Ground

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A Vibrant Place for Enganging with Art and Each Other

Located in the centre of Berlin, Gropius Bau is an internationally renowned institution that stages large-scale exhibitions and performances by contemporary artists. Its diverse events focus on exchange and discussion, bringing together local and global perspectives.

About Gropius Bau

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Widely regarded as one of the most original and influential artists of the 20th century, Diane Arbus’ bold black-and-white photographs demolish aesthetic conventions and upend all certainties. With&nbsp;Diane Arbus: Konstellationen, Gropius Bau presents the most comprehensive exhibition of her work to date.

Diane Arbus: Konstellationen

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Ligia Lewis is a central figure in redefining performance within the context of the visual arts. Her solo exhibition&nbsp;I’M NOT HERE FORRRRR… at Gropius Bau&nbsp;brings&nbsp;together new and existing works that explore themes of race, gender, violence and resistance.

Ligia Lewis:I’M NOT HERE FORRRRR...

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With BAUBAU, the artist Kerstin Br&auml;tsch designed an&nbsp;admission-free play space for kids, where more is allowed than forbidden. On Gropius Bau’s ground floor, colourful wallpapers, structures, objects and open-ended material called “loose parts” configure flexible spaces that are shaped by children’s activities.

BAUBAU:A&nbsp;Play Space for Kids

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What is and has been the role of play in public space? Gabriela Burkhalter’s&nbsp;Playing in the City&nbsp;presentation traces the history of playgrounds since their emergence in 1900 to today. The free presentation is open to all and can be seen in two rooms next to BAUBAU’s entrance.

Playing in the City:A Short History from 1900 to the Present

Currently at Gropius Bau

Widely regarded as one of the most original and influential artists of the 20th century, Diane Arbus’ bold black-and-white photographs demolish aesthetic conventions and upend all certainties. With Diane Arbus: Konstellationen, Gropius Bau presents the most comprehensive exhibition of her work to date. Featuring 454 prints, many of them shown here for the first time, Konstellationen offers new perspectives on Arbus’ iconic images and the wide range of her portraiture.

Ligia Lewis is a central figure in redefining performance within the context of the visual arts. In her multifaceted practice, she combines performance, live installation and film. From autumn 2025, Gropius Bau presents I’M NOT HERE FORRRRR…, the artist and choreographer’s most comprehensive solo exhibition to date. It brings together new and existing works that explore themes of race, gender, violence and resistance.

Ligia Lewis: I’M NOT HERE FORRRRR…

Current Exhibitions

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Free Admission to the Exhibition

Peter Hujar / Liz Deschenes: Persistence of Vision

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Playing, laughing, making noise, letting off steam, doing nothing – all in an exhibition venue! With BAUBAU, the artist Kerstin Br&auml;tsch designed an&nbsp;admission-free play space for kids, where more is allowed than forbidden. On Gropius Bau’s ground floor, colourful wallpapers, structures, objects and open-ended material called “loose parts” configure flexible spaces that are shaped by children’s activities. They set the tone and decide what happens in this place.

BAUBAU

Spielen in der Stadt

A Short History from 1900 to the Present

What has been the role of play in public space, both historically and in the present? Complementing BAUBAU, our free play space for kids, Gabriela Burkhalter’s Playing in the City presentation traces the history of playgrounds since their emergence in 1900 to today. The free presentation is open to all and can be seen in two rooms next to the play space’s entrance.

Playing in the City

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One of the most influential performance artists of all time, Marina Abramović presents Balkan Erotic Epic. The Exhibition at Gropius Bau in spring 2026. The show traces her ongoing engagement with ritual, eroticism, death and the body as a site of political resistance. Drawing on the folklore of Abramović’s native Balkans, the exhibition weaves together filmic and sculptural installations with live performance.

Marina Abramović: Balkan Erotic Epic. The Exhibition

Upcoming

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With Bishop Black, Hugo Tepest, Perel, River Roux, Ulrike Ottinger

On 8 January, we’re kicking off the new year with another edition of our event series Sp&auml;tschicht, which we’re organising in collaboration with Schwules Museum. This edition centers the body as a place of negotiation, militantly rejecting society’s norms.

Sp&auml;tschicht x Schwules Museum

We are looking forward to welcoming you back in mid-March with the reopening of our play space, <a href="${link:{uuid:{df42e57d-a14a-4b44-a5e4-9d3e7dcab5a6},repository:{website},path:{/bfs-de/gropius-bau/programm/baubau}}}">BAUBAU</a> (on 22 March), and two exhibitions, <a href="${link:{uuid:{55d64239-53fe-4b12-8567-a63191c6cae4},repository:{website},path:{/bfs-de/gropius-bau/programm/2025/ausstellungen/vaginal-davis}}}">Vaginal Davis: Fabelhaftes Produkt</a> (from 21 March) and <a href="${link:{uuid:{9618c701-bd05-432e-b688-5943e1f7fc57},repository:{website},path:{/bfs-de/gropius-bau/programm/2025/ausstellungen/yoko-ono}}}">YOKO ONO: MUSIC OF THE MIND</a> (from 11 April). For details on opening hours and tickets, please visit our <a href="${link:{uuid:{62c3018b-bb40-46ce-8019-646ec5cd2e4a},repository:{website},path:{/bfs-de/gropius-bau/besuch/informationen}}}">Information &amp; Tickets</a> page. We look forward to seeing you soon!

See you in March!

A&nbsp;Play Space for Kids

Playing, laughing, making noise, letting off steam, doing nothing – all in an exhibition venue! With BAUBAU, the artist Kerstin Br&auml;tsch designed an&nbsp;admission-free play space for kids, where more is allowed than forbidden. On Gropius Bau’s ground floor, colourful wallpapers, structures, objects and open-ended material called “loose parts” configure flexible spaces that are shaped by children’s activities.

A Short History from 1900 to the Present

What has been the role of play in public space, both historically and in the present? Complementing BAUBAU, our free play space for kids, Gabriela Burkhalter’s Playing in the City presentation traces the history of playgrounds since their emergence in 1900 to today. The free presentation is open to all and can be seen in two rooms next to the play space’s entrance.

Playing in the City &nbsp;

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Persistence of Vision

Working in New York City between the Stonewall uprising of 1969 and the onset of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, Peter Hujar captured a pivotal cultural moment in piercing black-and-white photographs. In the exhibition Persistence of Vision, Hujar’s photographs are interspersed with contemporary works by New York City-based artist Liz Deschenes, opening up an intergenerational dialogue on photography.&nbsp;

Peter Hujar / Liz Deschenes

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Balkan Erotic Epic. The Exhibition

Marina Abramović

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Located in the centre of Berlin, the Gropius Bau is a lively place to encounter art and each other. The internationally renowned institution stages large-scale exhibitions and performances by contemporary artists.

Ab 4. September

Festivals & Programme Series

The Deutsches Filmmuseum, Frankfurt am Main, presented the exhibition &ldquo;Fassbinder &ndash; NOW&rdquo; in nine rooms at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, from 6th&nbsp;May to 23rd&nbsp;August 2015, to mark Rainer Werner Fassbinder&rsquo;s 70th&nbsp;birthday on 31st&nbsp;May. The presentation has provided a new impetus to engage with one of the most significant German directors.

&ldquo;Fassbinder &ndash; NOW&rdquo; illustrated not only the film-maker&#39;s working methods, but also the coherence of his work in the cinema and its influence on the art being produced today. The exhibition thus took in a dual perspective: both historical and contemporary. It traced the aesthetic, political and media contexts that distanced our present from Fassbinder&#39;s time while simultaneously linked to it.

The presentation began with a juxtaposition: headlines and texts reflected the original public reception of Fassbinder&rsquo;s persona and his work. Fassbinder explained his understanding of film in excerpts from television interviews that may be seen on nine monitors &ndash; in the process implicitly clarifying the methods with which he stage-managed his own public image.

In the first part of the exhibition a different aspect of Fassbinder was juxtaposed with the image intended for public consumption: original documents and personal effects from his estate provided visitors with detailed insight into the director&#39;s projects and the environment in which he lived. Notes, letters, calculations, manuscripts, screenplays and shooting schedules traced Fassbinder&#39;s work methods as well as his personal attitude and illuminated his strategic and structural approach. A slideshow presented the director highly concentrated at work with his team. Visitors could leaf through digitised documents, such as complete screenplay manuscripts, at media stations, or further explored his professional archive by listening to his recorded notes for his masterpiece &ldquo;Berlin Alexanderplatz&rdquo; (1979/80). Additional attention was paid to Fassbinder&rsquo;s work with the costume designer Barbara Baum. Alongside her costumes, such as the spectacular silver lam&eacute; dress worn by Hanna Schygulla in &ldquo;Lili Marleen&rdquo; (1980) and the sailors&rsquo; uniforms from &ldquo;Querelle&rdquo; (1982), sketches from her personal collection were also shown.

The second part of the exhibition illustrated the recurring themes and aesthetic resources in Fassbinder&rsquo;s films, juxtaposed with the works of contemporary artists that refer to them either directly or indirectly. Thus, on a free-floating screen one may see film clips showing Fassbinder&rsquo;s 360-degree tracking shots, including the famous scene from &ldquo;Martha&rdquo; (1973). This was followed by Runa Islam&rsquo;s video installation &ldquo;Tuin&rdquo; (1998), for which this tracking shot served as a point of reference.

Excerpts from Fassbinder&rsquo;s films, shown as a compilation on three large screens, introduced the most important themes in his &oelig;uvre and also highlighted the stylistic resources, such as lighting, framing and direction of gaze, that characterised his films.

Jeroen de Rijke / Willem de Rooij, Tom Geens, Maryam Jafri and Ming Wong as well as the Canadian photographer Jeff Wall employed aesthetic strategies, themes and motifs from Fassbinder&rsquo;s films in their works. These were linked to the artists&rsquo; own attitudes. Their works facilitated a new way of looking at Fassbinder&rsquo;s work; they showed which aspects were of particular relevance today and demonstrated, on a higher level, how the cinema affects contemporary media. The video works, conversely, gave an impetus for the reception of Fassbinder in the present.

The project was a cooperation with the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation, Berlin, and was upported by the Capital Cultural Fund.

Fassbinder – JETZT

Fassbinder – NOW

Veranstaltungen

Programme

Ausstellungen 2015

Exhibitions 2015

2015

Programm

The Berliner Festspiele organise a range of festivals and art exhibitions, concerts, dance and theatre performances, readings, lectures, debates and much more throughout the year. These events are presented at a range of locations across Berlin but are concentrated primarily at their own two venues: the Gropius Bau and the Haus der Berliner Festspiele.

Berliner Festspiele

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In 2026 the Berliner Festspiele celebrate their 75th anniversary. A selection of events programmed throughout the entire year engage take the anniversary as their theme or mark the occasion with works at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele, the Gropius Bau, the Philharmonie, on Berlin’s Ringbahn and at other locations in the city. Outstanding international that liberal societies and their cultural institutions face in a new, multipolar world order. artists such as Marina Abramović, Gabriele St&ouml;tzer and Akira Takayama will set the agenda both thematically and aesthetically. Entitled “Die gro&szlig;e Unordnung” (The Great Disorder), the four-day focus Reflexes &amp; Reflections will also enquire about the challenges.

75 Years of the Berliner Festspiele

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The massacre, hostage-taking and rocket attacks by Hamas have shaken us deeply. The grue-some attack on Israel on 7&nbsp;October left us stunned and initially lost for words.

The Berliner Festspiele on Current Events in Israel, Gaza and Germany

With this letter of intent, we, the signing cultural organizations, express our intention to welcome, host and stage Ukrainian theatre artists in our venues, to make Ukrainian dramatic work visible to the European community.

Support of the Ukrainian Cultural Scene

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The Theatertreffen’s jury of critics announced their selection of the 10 most remarkable productions for the 2026 Theatertreffen. The programme will be published on 2&nbsp;April, advance ticket sale will begin on 18 April, 10:00.

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Tickets for ten selected concert highlights of the Musikfest Berlin, which in 2026 will also mark the 75th&nbsp;anniversary of the Berliner Festspiele, are already available. The programme includes Gy&ouml;rgy Ligeti’s grotesquely humorous anti-opera Le Grand Macabre and George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.

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The exploration of myths and rituals shapes the fourth edition of the Performing Arts Season with works by Marina Abramović, Mario Banushi, Marie Chouinard, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker / Rosas, Ictus, Bl!ndman, Dumb Type, Damien Jalet / Kohei Nawa and Gisèle Vienne. The programme will be published on 18 June, and advance ticket sales will start.

Performing Arts Season

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A dance collage by John Neumeier which explores aspects of German expressive dance through music, texts and songs and commemorates the victims of Nazi rule. Guest performance of the National Youth Ballet John Neumeier.