Gropius Bau

Gropius Bau 2023

Ein Politbarometer der anderen Art

Ein Politbarometer der anderen Art (German version only)

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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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The Gropius Bau is closed on Tuesdays.

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Gropius Bau 2025

Events

Exhibitions & Projects

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The Practice – What Moves Artists&nbsp;is a new 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 first volume of the series,&nbsp;On Making Less, the artist Rirkrit Tiravanija compiles various ideas and approaches to this topic.

The Practice – What Moves Artists

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For the second edition of our new event series Sp&auml;tschicht, we’re teaming up with Volksb&uuml;hne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz to present a free live programme featuring a book launch and conversation with Vaginal Davis, a screening by the Berlin-based art collective CHEAP, a DJ set by Bobby Beethoven and concerts by Dylan Kerr and Cortisa Star.

Sp&auml;tschicht x Volksb&uuml;hne

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YOKO ONO: MUSIC OF THE MIND

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Only until 19 January 2025 – we’ll be back for you in March! 🐛

BAUBAU

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Tanz im August, presented by HAU Hebbel am Ufer, is a festival of contemporary dance in Berlin. With three productions, it will once again be a guest at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele this year. The pre-sale of some programme highlights has already started.

Tanz im August

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Eight selected concert highlights of Musikfest Berlin 2025 have already been published and are on sale. These include guest performances by the world’s best symphony orchestras and choirs from the Netherlands, France, Belgium and Italy, which are rarely heard in Berlin.

Musikfest Berlin

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The international literature festival berlin, or ilb for short, is considered one of the most important literary festivals in the world. The programme for the 25th&nbsp;ilb will take place from 11 to 20&nbsp;September 2025. The Young Programme will run from 15 to 24&nbsp;September 2025. The main venue is the Haus der Berliner Festspiele, with additional locations for the Young Programme including Theater an der Parkaue and the Gelbe Villa.

25th international literature festival berlin

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This year, 53 ensembles from all over Germany applied for the Tanztreffen der Jugend. 8 young ensembles between contemporary and urban dance were chosen by the jury for the final selection. They will show their work at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele in autumn. &nbsp;

Tanztreffen der Jugend

More Berliner Festspiele

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Performing Exiles is an international and interdisciplinary festival produced by the Berliner Festspiele, that seeks to make diasporic lives in the city of Berlin visible and explore the contemporary meaning of exile. A preview of the programme has already been published. &nbsp;

Performing Exiles

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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 the 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

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&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 the play space’s entrance.

Playing in the City

Now at Gropius Bau

BAUBAUA&nbsp;Play Space for Kids

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For more than three decades, Rirkrit Tiravanija has been expanding the possibilities of what can happen in an exhibition space. As part of his practice, the artist creates situations that offer space to eat and drink, play and rest. They encourage chance encounters, relationships and their failure – in other words: life.&nbsp;The exhibition&nbsp;DAS GL&Uuml;CK IST NICHT IMMER LUSTIG&nbsp;(Happiness is not always fun)&nbsp;presents more than 80 of the artist’s works created between 1987 and 2024.

Rirkrit Tiravanija:&nbsp;DAS GL&Uuml;CK IST NICHT IMMER LUSTIG

Now at the Gropius Bau

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With Queer Ping Pong, Jimmy Robert’s Class, Team Ping Pong, Planningtorock, Meg10 and Wa22ermann

Sp&auml;tschicht x Pop-Kultur Festival

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. Its diverse events focus on exchange and discussion, bringing together local and global perspectives.&nbsp;

About the Gropius Bau

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!

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Becoming more accessible – with the help of Artificial Intelligence: the new AI-based app Gropius Bau Prisma allows you to translate exhibition texts into 36 languages, play them as audio, ask questions about the works on display and activate subtitles in various languages during events.

Gropius Bau Prisma

Key Visual Neu

Marking twenty years since artist, writer and performer Vaginal Davis made Berlin her home, Gropius Bau presents the first comprehensive solo exhibition of her work in Germany. In her expansive oeuvre, punk meets glamour, queer activism meets Black counter-culture and resistance meets desire.&nbsp;Vaginal Davis: Fabelhaftes Produkt&nbsp;features installations, paintings, video and film works, zines, writing, music and performances, offering an overview of Davis’ practice and artistic collaborations.

Vaginal DavisFabelhaftes Produkt

Since the 1950s, Yoko Ono has been ahead of her time, leaving her mark on visual arts, music and activism. To honour her groundbreaking work, Gropius Bau presents the comprehensive solo exhibition&nbsp;YOKO ONO: MUSIC OF THE MIND. Spanning the first floor and the atrium of Gropius Bau, the show brings together over 200 works from seven decades, revealing her radical approach to language, art and participation that continues to speak to the present moment.

YOKO ONOMUSIC OF THE MIND

Current Exhibitions

Marking twenty years since artist, writer and performer Vaginal Davis made Berlin her home, Gropius Bau presents the first comprehensive solo exhibition of her work in Germany. In her oeuvre, punk meets glamour, queer activism meets Black counter-culture and resistance meets desire.&nbsp;Fabelhaftes Produkt&nbsp;offers&nbsp;an overview of Davis’ practice and artistic collaborations.

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.

Currently at Gropius Bau

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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

Germany? Where is it? I do not know where to find such a country 
&mdash;&nbsp;Johann Wolfgang von Goethe und Friedrich Schiller, Xenien, 1796

On 9 November 1989, media all over the world reported on the fall of the Berlin Wall &ndash; an event that gave rise to a new, united Germany. Today, this Germany plays an important role in world affairs. For decades, citizens in East and West Germany lived under different political systems, but they had many deep-rooted memories in common.

This exhibition explores some of these memories on the basis of approximately 200 objects that originated during the last 600 years in Germany, and which are formative for culture, business and politics &ndash; past and present. They tell stories of great German achievements, of philosophers, poets and artists, and of historical events that have shaped the face of Germany today. A nation that has emerged in the shadow of the most terrible memory of all, the Holocaust.

There are memories that are well known, and others that have yet to be discovered or newly rediscovered. The selected works often tell several stories and paint a nuanced picture of Germany&rsquo;s complex history. Using high-profile museum pieces and historical documents, the exhibition&rsquo;s five chapters outline, in thematic and chronological jumps, how Germany ultimately became what it is today:

Germany - Memories of a Nation 
Fluid borders 
Empire and Nation 
Made in Germany 
Crisis and Remembrance

The exhibition begins and ends with the year 1989 and Gerhard Richter&rsquo;s Betty from 1991, who is glancing back.

Valuable works are on display, such as Albrecht D&uuml;rer&rsquo;s 1515 woodcut of a rhinoceros and the 1730 porcelain version of Johann Gottlieb Kirchner, which was based on a template from D&uuml;rer. They represent two of the most valuable technological and artistic achievements of the German world: modern printing and the invention of porcelain. Porcelain was re-invented in the early 18th century in Mei&szlig;en. It became an important European industry and proved competition to China&rsquo;s &ldquo;white gold&rdquo;. The grandiose Nuremberg Chronicle from 1493 reflects the introduction of the print, which was invented by Johannes Gutenberg in the 15th century. Through this invention, knowledge and art would easily be disseminated throughout Europe.

The astrolabe of 1596 displays German precision and the highest standards in gold work. Skilful German metal craftsmen built some of the best scientific instruments of Early Modern times. Johann Anton Linden was one of them. His astronomical compendium is as big as an eBook reader &ndash; and is a world time clock and GPS in one. An aphorism is engraved: &ldquo;Time is running out. Death is like a threshold that you have to cross.&rdquo;

One of the most impressive objects of the exhibition is Ernst Barlach&rsquo;s bronze sculpture, entitled The Floater (&ldquo;Schwebender&rdquo;). It&#39;s an angel in another form: the mouth and eyes are closed, the wings are folded, the gaze directed inward. Barlach (1870-1937) created it in 1926 on behalf of G&uuml;strower Church Council as a war memorial for the 700th&nbsp;anniversary of the cathedral. The face is reminiscent of the artist K&auml;the Kollwitz, who lost her son in the war in October&nbsp;1914. It represents the pain of all mothers.

Barlach enthusiastically enlisted himself for military service in 1915. He came back a pacifist. In 1933, the Nazis removed his sculptures from public spaces. He was considered a &ldquo;degenerate&rdquo; artist; because his style had nothing to do with heroism. In August 1937, the angel was removed from the cathedral, brought to Schwerin and melted down in 1940 for the war effort. The plaster mould was saved, and a second recast was made and hidden in a village near L&uuml;neburg. In 1951, the angel was meant to be issued again. However, G&uuml;strow was in East Germany, 160&nbsp;km from Berlin. The Cold War was in full swing. It was also unclear how the GDR would deal with Barlach&rsquo;s art, so the cast was issued in Cologne&rsquo;s Antoniterkirche. It wasn&rsquo;t until 1953 that a faithful cast for the G&uuml;strow Cathedral was made. On 13 December 1981, Helmut Schmidt, former Chancellor of Germany, and Erich Honecker, then General Secretary of the East German Socialist Unity Party of Germany, visited Barlach&rsquo;s angel in the cathedral in an official state visit. For both heads of state, the angel represented a common memory.

In 1937, the Buchenwald concentration camp was built at the gates of Weimar &ndash; the city of Goethe and Schiller, of Bauhaus, and the cradle of the democratic constitution of the Weimar Republic. According to estimates, approximately 56,000&nbsp;people died there by 1945. The camp gate of Buchenwald was built in 1938. It bears the inscription &ldquo;To each his own&rdquo;. It was designed by Franz Ehrlich, former Bauhaus student who was detained in the Buchenwald concentration camp. The signature is attached and legible from the inside. The prisoners would have had the inscription constantly before their eyes. The inscription hearkens back to the two-thousand-year old Roman legal principle: &ldquo;To live honourably, to hurt no one, to give each his own [suum cuique]&rdquo;.

Twelve years of Nazi terror counts as one of Germany&rsquo;s central, inescapable memories. The years led to the systematic murder of six million Jews and brought death and destruction throughout Europe.

Many artists, including Georg Baselitz, process this time again and again in their work. In his 1977 etching &ldquo;Eagle&rdquo;, the German eagle and the flag of democratic Germany are worn and frayed and upside down; a reflection perhaps on the fragility of these ideals.

The exhibition traces German identity from a British perspective. The result is a dialogue between Germany and its history.

A British Museum exhibition. Curator: Barrie Cook, historian at the British Museum. Initiated by Neil MacGregor, former Director at the British Museum, London, and created on the basis of his Beck-Verlag book.

The Martin-Gropius-Bau is grateful to the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media, whose funding made this exhibition possible, as well as the German Historical Museum and the Berlin State Museums for the generous loaning of items; to the Friede Springer Foundation for the generous support of the education programme.

Der Britische Blick: Deutschland – Erinnerungen einer Nation

The British View: Germany  – Memories of a Nation

The British View: Germany – Memories of a Nation

Veranstaltungen Der Britische Blick

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Exhibitions 2016

2016

Programm

Programme

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.

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Today’s Events

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The international and interdisciplinary festival produced by the Berliner Festspiele

Performing Exiles

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37th&nbsp;International Festival Berlin

Tanz im August

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The international literature festival berlin, or ilb for short, is considered one of the most important literary festivals in the world.

25th international literature festival berlin

Leichte Sprache

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You can listen to some of our events this year digitally in the Berliner Festspiele Media Library after the live concerts.&nbsp;In addition, On Demand offers from past years are available.

Musikfest Berlin in the Media Library

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The international Jazzfest Research Lab&nbsp;welcomes academics and students to take a critical look at the festival’s archive, its programmes, creators, musicians and – last but not least – its myths. In two seminars during the summer semester of 2024, students from the Berlin University of the Arts and the University of Hildesheim have explored the festival’s history from various perspectives. In this film, the participants give a first look at how they dealt with their research subject.

Introducing: Jazzfest Research Lab

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To mark its 60th anniversary, Jazzfest Berlin is celebrating the cultural diversity of the neighbouring district of Moabit in collaboration with around 35 official partners and initiatives and with over 350 participants of all ages.&nbsp;In June 2024, interviews were conducted with 20 partners who presented their perspectives, wishes and ideas for the Jazzfest Community Lab Moabit. You can get a first impression with this film.

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Curated by&nbsp;Meron Mendel and Saba-Nur Cheema&nbsp;

From 13 to 16 June 2024, the interdisciplinary themed days “Reflexes &amp; Reflections” on the Israel-Palestine conflict and its consequences for society in Germany took place at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele. You can now find video and audio recordings of the discourse events in the Berliner Festspiele Media Library!

Reflexes &amp; Reflections. 7 October, the war in Gaza and the debate in Germany

In the Media Library

Key Visual Musikfest Berlin 2025

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Major Orchestras and Vocal Ensembles as Guests in Berlin

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The 10 Remarkable Productions 2024

On 26 January, the Theatertreffen’s jury of critics announced their selection of 10 remarkable productions for the 2024 Theatertreffen at a press conference. Our congratulations go to the nominated production teams and all participants! The programme will be published on 5 April.

Theatertreffen 2024

“Radical Playgrounds”, an art parcours at the Gropius Bau, is spending eleven weeks exploring the differences between the concepts of play as competition and free play. Visitors are invited to walk and climb on the various installations and sculptures, to activate them and to shape the project collectively.

Summer School 2025

As part of Performing Exiles there will be a Summer School from 16 to 28&nbsp;June 2025. This will offer workshops, seminars and mentoring. The participants will see the performances and guest productions in the festival programme and visit artistic initiatives and cultural institutions in Berlin that operate across a wide range of disciplines and contexts. A public presentation of the participants’ current work and research at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele will complete the programme.

Open Call