KW Institute for Contemporary Art

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Logo of the Kunst-Werke Berlin

The KW Institute for Contemporary Art , also known as Kunst-Werke Berlin, is an exhibition space for contemporary art in Auguststrasse near Scheunenviertel in Berlin - Mitte . Klaus Biesenbach is the founding director of KW and the current director is Krist Gruijthuijsen .

description

Exterior view
patio
Dan Graham's Pavilion for Café Bravo

KW are dedicated to the production, presentation and communication of contemporary art. With exhibitions, commissioned work and events, KW pick up on trends from the national and international contemporary art and culture discourse and develop them further in collaboration with artists and other institutions.

KW works with other national as well as international contemporary art institutions, including MoMA PS1 in New York , Julia Stoschek Collection in Düsseldorf / Berlin, Mophradat in Belgium , and Schering Foundation in Berlin.

Krist Gruijthuijsen's artistic team currently (as of 2020) includes curator Anna Gritz, Nadim Samman as curator for the digital space, and Mason Leaver-Yap and Clémentine Deliss as associated curators.

Former chief curators were Anselm Franke (2001–2006), Susanne Pfeffer (2007–2012) and Ellen Blumenstein (2013–2016). In addition, internationally renowned guest curators were regularly invited to realize exhibitions.

history

The KW Institute for Contemporary Art was founded in 1991 by a group of students around Klaus Biesenbach in a former, then dilapidated margarine factory. After clarification of outstanding restitution claims, the listed front building from the second half of the 18th century and the factory from the founding period in the mid-1990s were acquired by the Stiftung Deutsche Klassenlotterie Berlin and made available to Kunst-Werke Berlin eV for cultural use. With the support of urban monument protection, the Monument Protection Foundation and the Deutsche Klassenlotterie Berlin Foundation, the association was able to renovate the property and expand it with two new buildings: The Café Bravo in the courtyard of KW was designed by the American artist Dan Graham and in cooperation with the architect Johanne Nalbach realized; the Berlin architect Hans Düttmann has added a 400 square meter exhibition hall to the transverse building. In total there are several office and studio rooms as well as a 2,000 m² exhibition space on five floors in the building.

The building is grouped around an inner courtyard where Café Bravo is located. This building is executed in a flush steel and glass construction and with its geometric abstraction sets a modern accent in the area's courtyard, which is otherwise dominated by old buildings. The actual exhibition rooms are located in the rear transverse building.

Since it was founded by a private initiative in 1996, the Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art has used part of the building for office space; Furthermore, the KW function as the center and venue of the Berlin Biennale, which takes place every two years. Since 2004, Kunst-Werke Berlin has acted as the sponsoring association of the Berlin Biennale. In 2016 it was decided to restructure the Kunst-Werke Berlin with two equivalent business areas: KW Institute for Contemporary Art and Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art. Gabriele Horn - successor to founding director Klaus Biesenbach and director of both institutions since 2004 - remained director of the Berlin Biennale, while Krist Gruijthuijsen was appointed new director of the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in 2016.

The KW was rebuilt by the end of 2016, during which time there were no exhibitions. The new opening took place in January 2017 and attracted around 5000 visitors.

Art exhibitions (selection)

Klaus Biesenbach also organized parallel exhibitions with MoMA PS1 in New York . He left Kunst-Werke in 2004 and went to the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) as a curator for media art . One of the last exhibitions he curated was the controversial RAF exhibition, which opened in January 2005.

In 2006 one was Fassbinder - retrospective held at KW, which met with the newly restored footage to great response. In 2013, Susanne Pfeffer curated a comprehensive retrospective by Christoph Schlingensief together with Klaus Biesenbach and Anna-Catharina Gebbers .

Web links

Commons : Kunst-Werke Berlin  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b About. Retrieved on July 15, 2020 (German).
  2. ↑ Urban renewal coordination office: Photo: Augustraße 96 before the renovation. In: tagesspiegel.de
  3. ↑ a b Café Bravo (KW). In: arch INFORM ; Retrieved December 14, 2009.
  4. ↑ Let's talk. In: Berliner Zeitung , January 24, 2017, p. 19.
  5. ^ Kirsten Grieshaber: An Art Exhibition Raises the Issue of Terrorism . In: New York Times , January 29, 2005.
  6. ↑ Christoph Schlingensief. December 1, 2013, accessed on March 22, 2019 (German).


Coordinates: 52 ° 31 '37.2 "  N , 13 ° 23' 41.3"  E