The Kunstbibliothek is one of the largest museum libraries dedicated to all facets of art history and cultural studies. Above and beyond this, however, it also boasts valuable collections on the history of architecture, photography, graphic design, fashion, book art, and media art. Its extremely diverse vast holdings include works in a wide variety of media: first editions and historical postcards, illustrated placards and posters, fashion designs, architectural drawings and models, bequests of photograph collections, and Fluxus assemblages. Together, the library and the various museum collections it contains represent the full spectrum of source material on the history of art.
Length: 3:19 minutes
Production: bboxx Filme
Today, Karl Blossfeldt’s plant photographs are internationally renowned. What is not widely known though is that the history of their production represents an integral chapter in the history of Berlin’s Kunstgewerbemuseum. Blossfeldt did not produce the images as stand-alone art photographs. They were rather conceived as elements of a collection of teaching materials which the artisan teacher Moritz Meurer (1839–1916) used to implement his concept of artistic plant studies in the 1890s at the Kunstgewerbeschule, the Kunstgewerbemuseum’s own school of design. The exhibition brings together these teaching materials as an ensemble for the first time, illustrating their remarkable diversity, both in terms of formal and aesthetic properties, and the media they employ.
Length: 1:27 minutes
Length: 5:48 minutes
Fragments are everywhere yet often seem out of place; sometimes they are even perceived as disturbing. Nevertheless, these incomplete or unfinished objects often harbour exciting insights and a wide range of stories that can be as fragmented as the objects’ conditions. This cross-collection exhibition presents works of art from different epochs and genres while telling their eventful histories.
Donatello was one of the founders of the Italian Renaissance. His works are characterised by technical innovations and revolutionised the artistic practice of their time. As part of a one-off collaboration between the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and the Musei del Bargello in Florence, this is the first exhibition to be held in Germany focussing on Donatello. Across some 90 works, many of them key works in his oeuvre that have never before been shown together, a panorama emerges that sparks the realisation that the story of Donatello is also the story of the Renaissance.
Video: Polyform
Claudia Skoda’s fashions made her a key figure and icon of the West Berlin underground scene in the 1970s and 1980s. She revolutionised the concept of knitwear fashion through her unconventional designs; her spectacular fashion shows attracted international attention. With this first solo show, the Kunstbibliothek (Art Library) pays tribute to Claudia Skoda’s work – in her home city of Berlin. The multimedia special exhibition presents around two hundred works, some previously never shown before, by Claudia Skoda and her art, film and music scene associates, including Martin Kippenberger, Luciano Castelli, Ulrike Ottinger, Tabea Blumenschein, Kraftwerk, Jim Rakete, and many more.
Length: 7:53 minutes
Length: 12:08 minutes
Film by Max von Gumppenberg in collaboration with Claudia Skoda
Length: 14:49 minutes
What do a sedan chair and a “lotus shoe” have in common with paintings and prints depicting scenes of work, hunting, games and sport? They all tell of the possibilities and constraints of movement experienced by those portrayed or of the owners of the objects on display, while also bearing witness to their status. The exhibition STATUS POWER MOVEMENT. Delight and Drudgery of Physical Activity highlights the potential of movement as a means of representing status across various cultural, temporal and geographical spaces.
Length: 0:45 Minutes
Logos, signage, corporate identity: The components that are now part and parcel of every company’s image were still in their infancy in the mid-20th century. The graphic design studio of Stankowski + Duschek was pioneering in this development a leading firm in the field of communication design for decades. Famous trademarks and well-known company images emerged from the partnership, including those of Deutsche Bank, Viessmann and Messe Frankfurt. The constructive aesthetic of the signage systems reveals the influence of Concrete Art that both Anton Stankowski (1906–1998) and Karl Duschek (1947–2011) found inspiration in during a similar period. The Exhibition in the Kunstbibliothek includes some 300 works covering the output of the Stankowski + Duschek design studio as well as of Stankowski’s previous office.
Images: Stankowski-Stiftung, Stuttgart und Meike Gatermann / Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Production: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kunstbibliothek / Stan Hema
Length: 0:33 Minutes
From 5 September 2019 to 26 January 2020, Kulturforum will present the group exhibition Micro Era. Media Art from China. Invited by the Nationalgalerie, the two artists Cao Fei (*1978) and Lu Yang (*1984) asked the artists Fang Di (*1987) and Zhang Peili (*1957) for a dialogue. The artists selected the works together with the Chinese and German curators Anna-Catharina Gebbers (Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegen-wart – Berlin), Victor Wang (freelance curator, Shanghai/London) and Yang Beichen (freelance curator and film reseacher, Beijing). The exhibition will be accompanied by Pi Li (M +, Hong Kong) as curatorial advisor.
In September 2019 the curatorial team of the exhibition "Micro Era. Media Art from China" Anna-Catharina Gebbers, Victor Wang and Yang Beichen, the exhibited artists Cao Fei, Fang Di, Lu Yang and Zhang Peili, met to talk about the exhibition, its dramaturgy and the works.
Length: 1:48 h
In September 2019 the curatorial team of the exhibition "Micro Era. Media Art from China" Anna-Catharina Gebbers, Victor Wang and Yang Beichen, the exhibited artists Cao Fei, Fang Di, Lu Yang and Zhang Peili, met to talk about the exhibition, its dramaturgy and the works.
Länge: 1:38 h
This large-scale exhibition at Berlin’s Kulturforum illuminates the deep relationship between Art and Alchemy on an exhibition space of 800 square meters. More than 200 works representing over 3,000 years of art and cultural history from the collections of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin will be on display, supplemented by outstanding loans from renowned international institutions.
The exhibition examines fashion as a design process and offers insights into the diverse steps involved in creating fashion that range from brainstorming to the finished product, from assessing materials and textile techniques to presenting the garments on the catwalk and in photo shootings.
Length: 1:22 minutes
For the first time ever, Berlin’s Kupferstichkabinett will be presenting the highlights of its Pop Art collection, one of the most important of its kind in Europe. Beginning with American printmaking from the 1960s and the Pop Art pioneers Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, Pop on Paper covers a broad spectrum – both thematically and stylistically – ranging from work by artists as diverse as Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist and Elaine Sturtevant through to European figures such as Allen Jones, Sigmar Polke und Maria Lassnig, and right up into the present day.
One of the central elements of “classic” Pop Art was how it worked with the trivial, mass-produced and distributed imagery and products of American consumer society, from the humble soup can and the comic strip through to the press photos of Jackie O, the widow of JFK. But not all Pop Art was created alike. Alongside “outsiders” such as Jim Dine, there were also Minimalist tendencies, as seen in the abstract, geometrical iconography of Robert Indiana, Gerald Laing and Allan D’Arcangelo.
Length: 0:28 Minutes
Production: Any Studio